


Rose Colored Boy

by blanchards



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Bending (Avatar), Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Child Abuse, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Neighbors, No Beta, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, References to Depression, Slow Burn, canon has been shot and buried in an unmarked grave, idiots to lovers, me writing this: zuko can control a little fire. as a treat, there will be an azula redemption its just gonna take a minute
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28039014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchards/pseuds/blanchards
Summary: The year that he turns nineteen, Zuko leaves his father’s house for what he swears to be the last time. Armed with no certain future and only the clothes on his back, he catches a bus to the one place he has left.Fifty-six miles away, Sokka is drowning in college applications and existential dread. Terrified of the future and too caught up in his head and the past; he’s desperate for a change of pace.A brooding, dark-haired boy, with a scar that definitely tells a story, moves in next door.And his window faces directly towards him.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka & Yue (Avatar), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 289
Kudos: 522





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is it, my magnum opus, the fruits of my labour, other words and phrases that mean I ripped my hair out writing this.  
> I offer you: what if modern au but bending ft. the inherent homoeroticism of communicating with hand written signs. Title is from a paramore song. Enjoy!

_ “Every time you take one path, you must live with the memory of the other: of a life left unchosen. Decide as seems best, one course or the other; each way will have its bitter with its sweet.” _

-Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

ZUKO

It starts on a Tuesday, as plenty of things do. For Zuko, it begins with a screaming match down the phone at a bus stop, not an irregular occurrence, and this time it doesn’t end with apologies and resignation. It ends with the click of a hang up, it ends with the boarding of a bus, it ends with a one way ticket to his Uncle’s house and a private vow to never return.

From the back seat of the vehicle you might have a hard time seeing it; but it ends with the removal of a sim card, a shaky breath, a couple tears, and then the moment’s gone. 

After the third change over, routine becomes automatic. Window seat, several rows back, headphones in, endure, repeat. It goes like this for an hour, until an hour turns into six, and by the time the sky outside is dark, Zuko almost can’t remember his fathers words. His breathing evened out somewhere around hour four. The violent remarks and hypothermic icy tone faded into a dull ache behind his temple around five. His eyes beg for sleep, threatening to close intermittently whenever the strain on them becomes too much; but he forces them to remain open, fixating his vision on the red digital clock above the driver’s seat. It’s late. Too late for him to be on a bus halfway across the country from home. Another few stops come and go, time only progresses forward, he leans his head back against the glass and prays to any god who’ll still listen for an uneventful arrival. His father once told him he used up all his luck on being born, for not the first time in his life, Zuko hopes that isn’t true. 

There are, perhaps, less dramatic ways to announce his arrival. But, appearing on the doorstep of a man you haven’t seen in six years, dishevelled with only the clothes on your back in the middle of the night is, as far as Zuko is concerned, quite in step with their relationship. The journey from the bus station to his Uncle’s house had been primarily muscle memory. His phone now rendered useless and without the aid of google maps, he was suddenly extremely grateful for all those summers where he was forced to walk everywhere. Iroh  _ refused  _ to own a car and had always claimed fresh air was “good for the soul”. Zuko’s father called him a  _ daft hippie bastard _ for it. Those begrudged walks were now the boy’s saving grace as he traced back the route from memory. 

It’s only 1:30am by the time he finds himself at the foot of an extremely familiar garden path. He pretends that the deep breath he suddenly sucks in is just from the exercise winding him. It’s comforting to know, that after all this time, that his uncles garden is still a picture of familiarity: coils of ivy and purple wisteria line the walls in harmony, grey slab stepping stones intertwine with a plush carpet of grass, bunches of honeysuckle flower amongst lovingly tamed shrubbery and strawberry bushes. Over the time he’s been away, Zuko’s life had remained painfully monotonous and unchanged, and it seemed the same could be said here. Yet, this time, feeling a sense of familiarity was equivalent to feeling something comforting and nostalgic, a far cry from the turmoil and depression the emotion would have indicated back in his fathers home. In the corner of the garden is their childhood swing; Azula had shoved him off of it about a million times. It still stands there: well kept but untouched, almost waiting for his return. It’s crooked, wooden seat provides a near irresistible opportunity for respite. 

The intelligent thing to do, undeniably, would have been to knock on the door. Or call out. Really, anything other than to sit on a random swing in someone’s garden at 1am. His feet scuff back and forth along the dirt with a gentle momentum. Zuko ponders how suspicious it may look for a cloaked figure to be leering outside the home of what was probably, to the neighbours, just a kind old man. He almost has to physically remind himself of his right to be there. 

Iroh is his uncle. Iroh loves him. Iroh  _ has  _ to love him, because if he doesn’t, there’s no one left who will. 

He feels a familiar warmth bloom at his fingertips as he tries to rid the cold biting night air from his body. Zuko tucks his hands into his jacket pockets, steadily monitoring his breathing. It would be one thing to use his bending internally to warm himself up - but another entirely to start a small fire in his uncle’s garden. He knows better, besides, than to let something as damning as that slip. Not here. He’s a long way from Caldera and Zuko knows better than most how polarising his abilities to control flames can be. Where swirls of waves or dragging of earth are met with wonder, with amazement, licks of fire are always met with fear. 

And that’s the way it’s been - perhaps not forever, but almost, by Zuko’s approximation. For as long as he’s been alive, as his father has, and his grandfather before him and before that. For as long as his lineage chose violence and power over peace. His mind laughs at the concept. As if they could ever choose peace. The idea seems far removed from where he sits in an empty garden, all but disowned, his fathers rejection already miles away. A very particular memory picks that moment to arise, just to deepen the blow. It carries with it the clear visuals of a hole in the wall restaurant one summer and Azula’s infamous temper tantrums. 

Really, in the many years they’d been visiting, it was a surprise it hadn’t ever happened sooner. A spark had escaped her hands in fits of anger. Just one, accidental, fine enough that you’d miss it if you weren’t looking. 

People always were.

He remembers a paling hostess, hushed tones between wait staff and probably the fiercest man they could produce telling them how they weren’t welcome anymore. His words had been dangerous but his eyes betrayed his terror. That man wasn’t angry, not primarily. Zuko didn’t know much then, but he  _ knew  _ anger. His fathers choice emotion; ruthless, cruel - that man didn’t hold the utter disgust and contempt that could always be found in Ozai’s words. His balled up fists were slightly shaking, his poised figure still chose to stand at a distance, every imitating action was undermined by one clear observation. These people- this man- he was  _ scared _ . They’d left immediately, despite protests from his confused younger sister. Zuko watched her shout words she’d only learnt from one place as Iroh dragged her from the doors. His face was another picture Zuko already knew well, this time from first-person experience: shame. Later, it had fallen upon the older man, not quite grey back then, but getting to it, to explain to a barely teenage boy how the cities and civilians feared,  _ loathed _ , their power. How they had every right to. How the hands that dealt this fate to them had been none other but their very own. 

Zuko returned home to his father. 

His father: a figurehead for  _ change _ , for the nation, Caldera’s most respected politician. His son watched him now with open eyes and a knowing mind. The story of the restaurant in Republic City was, of course, explained in a different way: in not so many words that meant “cowardice” and “inferior”. His father scoffed, Azula giggled, Zuko said nothing, as usual. He went to bed that night, and, when a particularly cool breeze encouraged an intervention from him, he’d decided to endure it instead. 

He isn’t sure how long he sits there for, gently rocking back and forth contemplating his own mortality,  _ or something like that _ , but it’s long enough for someone to see him. If they were somebody with more stealth, they may have gotten away with it. Fortunately for Zuko, or unfortunately - depending how you look at it, this person doesn’t seem to be familiar with the concept. The individual is hanging half way up the trellis connected to the side of the neighbouring house, and Zuko saw him ten minutes ago. The music blaring out of the earbud that’s fallen from his left ear would give him away pretty quickly, if his slightly agape fearful expression hadn’t already. Zuko’s hands go cold again. 

He  _ had  _ hoped for a little more reflection time, maybe until sunrise, he knows his uncle is an early riser and missing out on one night of sleep is hardly at the forefront of his problems right now. But Zuko takes one look at the other boy, still frozen mid-climb, and makes an executive decision: he’d rather approach the subject now, and risk disturbing Iroh’s rest, than wait until this kid inevitably rings the police, and they do that job for him. Still, it looks like the other boy might call for help regardless as he approaches his Uncle’s door, and it doesn’t help matters that in Zuko’s sudden panic at the realisation of danger, all he can think of to say is, 

“I’m not an intruder.”

There’s a moment of silence. Two. Twenty. He begins to wonder if he actually said it aloud or might still be able to retain some of his dignity. The two stay in this quiet stand off for some time, before the other boy’s stunned expression finally shifts, him apparently regaining control of his facial muscles at last. His mouth quips into an unfriendly smirk. 

“Sounds like something an intruder would say.”

And, okay, he’s got him there. But really, any suspicions of the boy’s could be remedied the second he calls for his Uncle to confirm his identity as Not A Murderer. It’s as easy as that. 

So, naturally, and because he’s an idiot by birth right, Zuko doesn’t. 

Something makes him hesitate, drawing his hand back from the door. There’s every possibility he’s imagining the curious glint in the boy’s eye, the quirk in his eyebrow; but it seems, now they’re closer, that this person has quickly assessed him to be significantly less of a threat - and Zuko, god knows why, decides to try his luck. 

“Well, you’re halfway through scaling that wall. Not exactly a picture of innocence.” He folds his arms for emphasis, angling his body slightly towards his inquisitor and raising his own eyebrows in response.

“Ah.” The boy glances back up towards a ledge above him - the window, presumably his, has been left ajar. He gives another once over at Zuko, eyebrows knitting together, seemingly reconfiguring his threat level, then hops off the trellis. He lands back on his feet with ease. 

“Okay, _technically_ , yes, I am breaking into my own house. But- that’s it. My. Own. House.” He punctuates every word and takes a cautionary step back, likely incase Zuko is going to murder somebody tonight after all, and he wants to ensure he isn’t first choice. “What’s your excuse.”

He simply shrugs in response. “This is my Uncle’s house. I’m.. Visiting.” He tries not to outwardly cringe at the blatant over simplification of the situation. 

The boy continues to look unconvinced. Now illuminated by the dim glow of the porch lights, Zuko sees him clearer. He’s tall and lean with warm tan skin poking out from under the collar of his winter jacket; his dark hair hangs like a curtain around his face, stopping just shy of his chin, presumably once styled but now dislodged by the wind. It’s too dark to fully make out the colour of his eyes, but they’re wild and filled with life and mirth and Zuko isn’t sure whether to be intrigued or afraid. He’s still undoubtedly being stared down within an inch of his life, but that smirk is back with less malice this time. 

“Visiting… at 2am?”

“It was half-past one when I got here, actually.”  _ As if the distinction matters. _

The other raises his eyebrows, then lets out a low whistle, insufferable half-smile still cemented in place. “Time flies when you’re brooding on a swing, I guess.”

Zuko flounders. He  _ wasn’t _ brooding. But if he was, he’s had quite a day, and he thinks it’s the least he’s entitled to, thank you very much. He considers saying this, but deciding all attempts to be fruitless, settles on a scowl instead. 

“I’m going inside now.” He declares, as if his entire ability to follow through on that statement isn’t entirely up in the air. His interrogator just lets out a short laugh. He raises his hands in surrender, then, stepping back towards the wall again, rests one on the wooden lattice and gestures with the other, as if to say _ go ahead _ . So he does. 

There’s a universe where nothing happens. Where Zuko waits for his Uncle to never arrive. Where his father turns out to be right about how nobody could  _ truly  _ love such a disappointment, and where he returns to the man’s clutches, a day later, head hung. But, perhaps one of the spirits he prayed to had found pity. Maybe, this time, he could have a day off from everything in his life consistently going to shit. Iroh flings open the door with wide eyes and near trembling hands. In this universe, this once, Zuko catches a break. 

He’s expecting a lecture, some chastising for travelling alone this late, for giving up his life and all its privileges because he was too weak to pay the price for them. At the very least, he imagines it warrants a disappointed look - y’know, out of love. It’s possible, as he’s immediately scooped into warm, forgiving arms, that Zuko has simply spent far too long believing in his fathers definition of  _ what love is _ . Iroh still smells like fresh soap, fabric softener and menthol toothpaste. His embrace still feels like being nine years old and running wild, the weight of the world not yet on his shoulders. He feels like summer, like kindness and mercy, like the only person to visit him in the hospital at thirteen. Maybe, he selfishly allows himself to think, Iroh could one day feel like home. 

At last, dislodging himself from his Uncle’s arms almost too soon, he just manages to catch a glimpse of the other boy as he hauls himself up the ledge and through his window. It seems he stuck around only long enough to hold Zuko to his word and, once satisfied, had climbed back up again. He spins on his heel to close the latch - as he does, he seems to make a point to catch his eye, throwing Zuko his first genuine smile. It’s small, and measured, they’re still largely strangers after all, but it quickly curls into something more mischievous. He places a finger over his lips in a shushing motion and pointedly flickers his eyes over to where he likely assumes Iroh is standing unaware in the doorway. 

Zuko tries very hard not to roll his own.

Stepping forward into the house, another familiar smell fills his senses.

Jasmine. It’s a scent that themed his childhood. Always wafting in warm, aromatic waves through the house. It does now, as it did then. God, he missed it here. No sooner is he over the threshold, he’s guided through the living room and up a flight of stairs. When his Uncle hands him a pair of pyjamas, likely far too big but cosy and soft enough that it doesn’t matter, and heads back towards the kitchen, Zuko guesses it won’t be the last he sees of him that night. He takes his temporary absence as a chance to explore. There’s a room for him, there always was, and it sits at the end of the corridor. Directly adjacent to it is a second one - identical. The only difference between the two is the scattering of posters and memorabilia Zuko left discarded all those years ago; when he walked out of the house down the path to a parked car, weight in his chest, unaware it would be for the last time. He shakes his head as if to discard the memory, it’s already burdened him long enough. It lives in his mind, in a special area reserved only for that and the look of pain on his Uncle's face as he told him he’d be returning home after the accident. He sticks his head into the room that isn’t his. Azula never cared for decorating hers, she always insisted there was no point, spending long summers rolling her eyes and laughing at Zuko for daring to form a material connection to the place. She stopped visiting a year before he did, their father allowing her to wait out the season on campus at the pristine all girls boarding school he shipped her to instead. He never wanted to admit it, some small part of him hoping his sister would have enough care left in her to be upset if she overheard, but that final summer was the best of them all.

The tea shop his Uncle often took him to stood as the cornerstone for his childhood. They’d been before, of course, but his sister always one-too-many times complained that it was boring, and around Zuko’s 10th birthday their summer visits there had become less frequent. But  _ he  _ loved it. He liked the muted ebbing and flowing noise, the gentle rise and fall of people’s hushed voices intermingled with a quiet jazz from the radio. He liked watching the customers; some engrossed in discussion, some distracted by technology, the rare few rapt with a book or drawing. And so, as if able to read his mind, when the fateful summer came that it was only him in the large SUV arriving on his Uncle’s doorstep, so began an uptake in their tea shop jaunts. 

There was an unspoken rule between them that those days were reserved for peace - a stillness amongst the bustling town that often overwhelmed him. Zuko would never admit it, lest his father overheard him, (and his father  _ always _ overheard him, somehow) but he often found the constant jitter and buzz of lively roads to be less than enjoyable. They made him anxious. Now, without Azula there to fix his nervous habits with a cold stare or simply disregard them entirely, Zuko was able to find respite. And it always came in the form of being tugged towards the familiar cosy building whenever his brow furrowed or his hands threatened to tremble. Within its painted walls, things were almost rehearsed, the back and forth volume was calming; predictable and lulling and he was safe here, even if no where else.

Iroh never commented on it, despite seeming to always know the right moment for a break. Unsurprisingly, most of their other activities that year followed the same understanding, kind pattern. For three blissful months, out of almost thirteen years, Zuko was almost able to feel himself prioritised and cared for unconditionally. A part of him hated it, didn’t deserve it, resented himself for allowing such tenderness. But the voice he heard in his head at night, chastising him for weakness, was never his own. In this house was hope, promises of care that he hadn’t felt since the very night his mother left, now living in a nightmare. He was ready to wake up. He wanted to be loved again. As grew to be a pattern in his life, all good things ended too soon. 

There’s a singular light coming from the window adjacent to his own. Zuko notes it as he slips through the old bedroom door and lays the night clothes down gingerly on the mattress. As if one too-forceful movement may shatter the reality entirely. Curiosity having gotten the better of him, he wanders over aimlessly to investigate. He has a hunch that he isn’t quite sure he wants to come true yet. 

It does, anyway.

Across the way, the blinds aren’t drawn yet. And from behind the loose hanging sheer blue curtains that seem more there for decoration, he notes a broad figure, one that’s increasingly becoming more familiar. The figure seems to spot him too. The first thing Zuko observes, not that he’s looking too intensely, is that the length of his hair is now scraped back into a wolf tail displaying two neatly shorn sides. Some unruly strands stick out disobediently and curl around his face. The boy has a pair of thick, black rimmed, square glasses perched on the bridge of his nose; piercing irises watch Zuko with a curious, mirthful expression behind the glass and frames. The signature smirk he was supporting appears to have returned yet again, with a new found confidence. And, in all honesty, Zuko is about to pull his own curtains shut - the thrumming beyond his eyelids will force him into a coma soon if he doesn’t listen to it. It’s just- it’s at this exact moment that the other boy seems to get an  _ idea _ . Zuko knows it’s an idea, because first, his eyebrows shoot up as if he’s realising something for the very first time. Then, his face goes through about six stages of emotion at once. Now, he’s rooting around for something, slightly out of the window frame. He returns moments later with a sketch pad and a marker, face split into a kind smile. 

Pulling the cap off and holding it between his teeth, the boy furiously scribbles something onto the first black page he finds. The make-shift sign he holds up moments later, that reads “Uncle?”, apparently winds Zuko more than he’s anticipating. From his own reflection showing an extremely pale, somewhat alarmed expression, Zuko can quite easily put together why the boy suddenly flips the sheet over with a slight degree of panic and writes something else. 

This time his words spell out “You said he was?” and Zuko feels himself breathe again. 

Satisfied that Iroh’s neighbour isn’t one of his father’s spies, or just freakishly observant to the point of threat (or a mind reader), he affords him a small, curt nod in response.  _ It’s kind of me _ , he thinks, to pay his questions any attention at all, and satisfied that he’s filled his quota for ‘appeasing neighbourhood boys he’s just met’ for the year, Zuko really does reach for the curtains this time. He’s only stopped short by another flip of paper and the words “SOKKA” written in all caps with a smiley face. 

Zuko frowns. He doesn’t  _ have  _ to respond, but  _ Sokka  _ is staring at him with something that looks an awful lot like blind hope and god knows he’s already made enough stupid decisions today, what’s one more? He starts looking for paper.

The search is almost futile. He hasn’t been back in years and nothing seems to have been touched or moved much, except to be dusted. After at least a couple of minutes of looking around somewhat frantically, Zuko is left with only one option of communication. He looks down momentarily at the single sheet of paper in his hands. It has to be thirteen, fourteen years old at least. Something from the very first summer he spent there. The word ZUKO stares back up at him, scrawled across the page in red and yellow crayon - the handwriting of a five year old, one very proud of being able to spell their own name. It stayed all this time tacked to the wall behind his bed, collaged amongst a handful of other sentimentalities; a cinema ticket, a trading card, a printed photo of his mother. Cautiously he holds it up to the window. Azula would have scoffed. But Sokka grins around the pen cap still in his mouth. 

He looks like he’s about to launch into another question, but fortune favours Zuko for once in his life and he doesn’t manage to before something out of sight makes him jump. It would be impossible to hear anything quieter than a scream through two sets of glazing and metres of outside air, but he suspects somebody may have just caught on to Sokka’s late night excursion. No sooner is he startled, the boy is, at once, three feet closer to the window, saluting him with two fingers and a grin. Then he winds the blinds shut, pen and paper long abandoned behind him. 

Zuko isn’t aware of how long he stands there, staring out the window into the dark, until something of equal turn disturbs  _ him.  _ Contrary to whatever stern reprimand or confused shout Sokka received, however, his comes only in the form of his Uncle gently clearing his throat from the doorway. It still causes him to spin round in alert regardless; old habits die hard.

“Uncle, I’m-” he starts, but Iroh waves off any impending apology with a light hand. 

“Tomorrow,” the man interrupts, voice thick with exhaustion but not unkind, “we will talk. Tonight, nephew-” he gestures to the bed and still discarded pyjamas, “please, rest.” His uncle smiles wistfully for a moment at the paper he realises he’s still holding, then nods and closes the door behind him. His actions are measured and gentle. Still, it takes until the padding of his feet along the landing is no longer audible before Zuko allows himself to move. 

He places the paper back into its rightful position amongst the other memories and lies down atop of the sheets, kicking his shoes off as an afterthought for the linen. There’s a cup of tea left on the nightstand, cold now - but - he should have known. The tired smile that creeps through the corners of his mouth at the sight of it is between him and the moon. He could warm it up, but he won’t; sleep tugs unwaveringly at his mind. It’s a wide shot, potentially even impossible, but closing his eyes and tuning into the heavy breathing from down the hall, Zuko cautiously thinks he might be able to feel some peace. For the first time in 24 hours. For the first time in six years. For the first time in a long day and an even longer night; punctuated by anxiety and determination. Piece by piece his thoughts unwind and slowly muddle into static. 

Soon, all that will be left is a February breeze, the soft sounds of snores, and the smell of jasmine tea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment, if you like or you can talk to me on tumblr @[tysukis](http://tysukis.tumblr.com/) <3


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Many evenings have passed now, lost to papers that read “Hi :)” and intermittent frowns when his attempts are met with no response. Sometimes he gets the courtesy of a head shake, sometimes nothing. Often the tall dark haired boy, Zuko - his mind supplies, will simply look away. On worse days it seems the curtains don’t open at all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I just wanna say a huge thank you to all of you who left comments or messaged me on tumblr about chapter one - it’s been so overwhelming to hear all your kind words. I hope you enjoy this chapter just as much. 
> 
> A small note: Last chapter, I implied that I was setting this in Ba Sing Se. After much contemplation, I’ve retconned that to be Republic City instead. It just makes more sense for the general plot. Hope that’s okay! Enjoy :)

_“What matters is precisely this; the unspoken at the edge of the spoken.”_

\- Virginia Wolf

  
SOKKA

The first few days after Zuko moves in are largely uneventful ones. When these days turn into weeks, Sokka begins to count their one standing interaction as an isolated event. 

Many evenings have passed now, lost to papers that read “Hi :)” and intermittent frowns when his attempts are met with no response. Sometimes he gets the courtesy of a head shake, sometimes nothing. Often the dark haired boy, _Zuko_ \- his mind supplies, will simply look away. On worse days it seems the curtains don’t open at all. 

Sokka sighs and pushes the stack of papers away from where he sits at the desk. He watches his latest attempt to communicate (a paper with “Zuko!!!!!!! :)” scrawled across it in black maker) float to the floor on impact. He decides it isn’t worth retrieving. Maybe his neighbour really didn’t want to know him - and that would be okay! Except, he _did_ give Sokka his name, and you don’t just give out your name to people you plan on ignoring, right? The huff of frustration and pout that crosses his features is only 50% involuntary. 

Pulling his wolf tail free and leaning back on his chair, Sokka decides to pointedly look anywhere apart from the stack of university applications littering the table top. He’s already sunk six hours of his evening that he’ll never get back into drafting and writing and rewriting; if he looks even 40° toward the desk surface ever again he’ll probably develop a stress migraine. On the list of things he enjoyed about growing older, planning for higher education came decidedly at the end. His eyes settle on the corkboard hanging above his bed. Designs, scribbles, photos and old A+ graded physics papers still hang there, documenting the past 5 years of his life. 

The board had been a present. A _I’m sorry we’re moving houses and schools again_ gift. It stands so crowded now that you can barely see the tan background, but in the center of the collage there’s a long string of photo booth photographs. Sokka, thirteen, is grinning at the camera. A girl equal in age, and height, sits beside him with her arms flung around his neck. Her hair is dark and flowing, with two plaits hanging at the front, a singular ice-white streak interwoven in them, the pigmentation stemming from a birthmark. Both are bundled up in coats and scarves, rosey cheeks to match. Sokka’s expressions change from wide smiles to goofy faces as the photos go on, and in the low-resolution quality and darkness of the booth, you almost wouldn't notice the red rims around his eyes. 

The week that he, his sister and their father moved in, Sokka had gone missing. He’d rode his bike, in the winter sleet, all the way back into the Capital of Republic City and knocked on the first house he knew. The house, of course, belonging to Yue. 

Yue was Sokka’s first childhood friend, his first crush; from painting together as kids to sneaking into scary movies as preteens, they’d grown up together and done it all. He loved Yue because she was just like him - an equal, two halves of a perfect circle. Katara was off learning how to play with water, _or whatever_ , and the world gaped in awe as children and adults alike bent the element's to their will. But in Sokka’s childhood bedroom, under a fort of blankets and pillows, they were busy creating their own world. One where you didn’t need powers to be special. One where ‘Yues’ and ‘Sokkas’ were just as valuable, just as revered. One where their talents mattered just as much. 

It hadn’t been easy after Katara was born. Their parents were incredible people: a renowned civil rights lawyer mother and a father dedicated to reconnecting and rebuilding dispersed Southern Water Tribe communities. Neither of them had the talent to bend the elements but it never made them any less whole; Sokka was on track to be kind and creative and follow in their humanitarian footsteps. When his sister was five, she’d caused the ripple of a puddle with the outcast of her wrist. That day, registering in his mind, behind the gasp of his mother and surprised laugh of his father, was the realisation that everything he knew had just changed. 

Try as his parents might, it would seem inevitable that from this moment on he would grow up somewhat in Katara’s shadow. That was just the way the world was. And as he attended school with children who swirled waves or launched cascades of earth, this fact only grew more prominent. Looking back, Sokka could imagine how outcast he would have felt, put down for his mortal limits - had he not, at six years old, made a certain friendship. A bond that would try to protect him from feelings of doubt and inferiority, and thoughts that would attempt to make home in his heart across the years to come. At six years old he’d met Yue. 

Yue, who, after watching Katara’s blossoming ability, went home, and came back the next day, showing Sokka how they too could cause ripples on water - by skipping rocks across the surface. 

It was a natural progression, that the day his life was turned on its head again, at thirteen, the first place he would turn would be to her. Because she understood, because she always would. Because in the blistering wind, she grabbed her own bike, ignoring her fathers frets and suggestions to call the family driver, and they peddled to the nearest shopping complex. And they’d window shopped, and laughed and ate until Sokka almost couldn’t remember why he was so sad. Crammed into a photobooth, paying no attention to the universe outside of their own, they’d made each other a promise: a vow that, however far they strayed, they would always have a home in one another. 

Sokka sighs and lets his eyes fall from the photo on the board. He wishes promises made at thirteen were easier to keep. 

The bright city lights of the Capital are obnoxious at best and blinding at worst. Sokka curses them as he tries not to run the old beat up car off the road. Learning to drive in the outskirt towns of Republic City had been a blessing, he isn’t sure he would have passed the test at all had they remained in the centre when he came of age for it. Often, contemplative evenings, as such, lead him into the hills, deep into the greenery, where the only illuminations were his headlights. Sokka only knows the Capital in daylight these days, through occasional excursions to take Katara to bending classes and not much else. Being completely transparent: he avoids it whenever he can. He swerves to miss a head on collision from someone driving far too fast for the hour, and mumbles a remark about them getting their licence from a cereal box under his breath. It’s strange for him to think, streets then so filled with promise and ambition now seem strange and uninviting. 

When Sokka was nine, his mother died, and they’d moved to a smaller house slightly further out. His father said they needed space away to heal. Sure, it made commutes to Yue’s harder and the school bus journey was a little longer, but all considered, they were still largely a part of the thronging community and all of its bright lights and grandeur. When they’d finally left the Capital for good four years later, Sokka was devastated. It’s amusing now, how it had turned out to be exactly what he needed all along. Roads once paved with gold now shine like tarnished copper.

He drives for what feels like hours, and in no particular direction at all - but the location he ends up in is far from surprising. His tarnished navy blue vehicle sticks out sorely, flush against rows of tall white houses. Pristine walls, sloping, intricate architecture; when Sokka was much, much younger he used to dream of designing towering buildings like these - sketchbooks filled up with crude childish approximations of the spiralling details and complex lines. In the summer, he would sit outside on the grass for hours at a time, daydreaming up entire streets of his own creation. He was long removed from these houses now. But, miles away, when he grew with age to love maths in equal proportion to art and flirted with the idea of combining the two - memories of those summer afternoons were the first to come to mind. Face to face with them now almost burns. Remnants of a life snatched away from him; friends and a future lost to tragedy, distance and status. He fights all urges to wince at what was once warm nostalgia. 

Foot halted above the pedal, he’s about to drive away from the street and the sudden bitter, metallic taste in his mouth when a familiar chime breaks through the silence.   
  


From: Yue <3

//10:45pm// is that your car outside my house??

//10:47pm// ?????

//10:48pm// sokka??

//10:50pm// i’m coming down. wait there. 

He notices the rustle of curtains behind an upstairs window a moment too late. 

It’s no secret to anyone who knew Sokka within the first decade of his life that Yue was the only person he had eyes for. Even Katara used to bully him for the smitten faces he’d make at her whenever they spent time together. And had so much not changed in the years he’d been away, Sokka imagines it would almost be easy to fall back into that. He confirms his suspicions as a tall elegant figure with cascading waves of shiny hair, gently steps out into the night and pads towards his car in a white robe and fluffy slippers. He unlocks the passenger side door. 

Yue was always strikingly beautiful inside and out, from her soft yet chiseled features and glassy blue eyes to her sharp mind and even sharper tongue. Her steps were always graceful, even from a young age: she never walked through life but rather floated. Her words were always soft, steady and measured, the side effect of diplomat parents, Sokka supposed, but laced with wit. Once you locked eyes on Yue, she came with a guarantee you’d never look away. 

Except for now, except if you're Sokka - who is staring at the steering wheel with an undeterrable interest. 

“So…” she starts, after a while, when the awkward silence apparently becomes too much for her to bear. From his peripheral vision Sokka can see her twirling a loose strand of hair around her index finger - the fact that her nervous mannerisms remain unchanged is a somewhat comforting thing. 

“Sorry.” He closes his eyes and rests his head back against the seat, but he can hear from the shift in movement that she’s turned to face him now. She makes a slightly puzzled noise, encouraging him to continue. 

“I should have stayed in touch. I should have come back. To visit- sooner- I mean. I don’t know. I didn’t _intend_ to show up on your doorstep in the middle of the night.” he lets out a strangled laugh.

It’s quiet for a second, before a hand comes to gently rest on his thigh, coupled with an even gentler “ _I missed you._ ” And if the words don’t cut through him alone - then the sad, reflective tone of voice absolutely does. 

He inhales sharply, resting his hand atop of hers. “You reached out so many times and I just- I didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry, Yue. I’m sorry for being a shit friend.” Sokka forces his eyes to open, and, because he’s feeling brave apparently, even chances to look at her when he says it. Her eyes look sad, something wistful about them, and he has to quickly train his vision back to the wheel before he can do something stupid, like cry. 

Yue doesn’t respond straight away, seemingly thinking her words over and choosing them carefully. And it’s just _so_ like her, Sokka figures; he was always the one feeling everything at 100mph and rushing into traffic before looking. Yue was collected, calm, poised - she was understanding where Sokka was emotional and rash. Always too passionate for his own good. There’s no mirror, but he can be pretty certain that, by the time she speaks, the face he’s pulling is almost certainly a frown.

“Sokka. When your mother died- that was _so_ hard for you. And, I don’t know, I guess at some point you started brushing it off. But- I know this place, these streets, they remind you of her, don’t they?” She doesn't wait for an answer before continuing, she knows him too well to need one. “Remember when we were thirteen, and you cycled to my house? Fucking hell, you _cycled_ Sokka, in the middle of _winter_ , spirits knows how many miles. And then you cried, so we went shopping and you went back home that night - and my dad forced you to be driven, remember? With the bike all strapped to the roof? He thought you’d catch your death out there - and you told me-”

“That we’d always have each other. I know. I’m sorry-”

“You _told_ me,” she pointedly interjects, raising an eyebrow at him for the interruption. Sokka looks away again, and doesn’t keep going. “that maybe things wouldn’t be so bad, you told me that change could be good.”

The silence that settles over them isn’t as stifling this time, but still feels weirdly charged. It’s as if she’s giving Sokka the chance to catch his breath despite her being the one talking. He pushes the familiar black rimmed frames off his face and onto the top of his head, rubbing at his eyes. 

“Was it?”

He looks back to her when the spots in his vision finally fade away. His best friend, the person who always understood him. Who, even now, after all this time, when she should be fuming at him, knows exactly what to say. Sokka offers her a weak smile. “Yes.”

The warmth spreading over Yue’s face is just shy of infectious, she squeezes his leg where her hand still rests - a comfort. “Friends drift apart sometimes Sokka, and that’s okay, it wasn’t personal - I know that. Friends just want what's best for each other. I mean, are you happier? Now you’re away from all-” she gesticulates broadly out of the window with her free hand “-this.”

“Yeah.” the ghost of a smile threatens his lips, “I am. Doing better. Sort of. But I still miss you. And I miss this-” Sokka matches her wild hand movements comically, and earns a small laugh, “-sometimes.”

“That’s okay.” her face looks so painfully earnest that he has to suddenly curse the months, the years he spent alone. At first, how he told himself that nobody would understand. All the time he spent wallowing in self pity, lest he become a burden to anybody around him. “You can always call, y’know, if it means a lot to you,” Yue moves her arm to elbow him but her tone is nothing but playful. “I know I’m brilliant company, but you hardly needed to drive to my house in the middle of the night.” she pretends to roll her eyes in exaggeration, smirk playing on her lips, “This could have been an email, Sokka.”

Conversation flows quicker, easier, after that. Anecdotes from their now very separate lives, tied together with the reminiscing of the past. Yue talks about her parents' borderline insistence that she follows them into politics and doesn’t let her “intelligence go to waste” (they both grimace at that). All she longs for, really, is not so much a specific thing but simply the freedom to choose whatever it may be. They both lament the piles of paperwork and applications building up in their respective houses. Sokka talks about his own expectations to do well, his goals to attend school for architecture, not just for love but to prove all the traditionalists wrong when they say it should be left to benders. (Just because he can’t pile ice up into walls with his mind doesn’t mean he can’t still design and execute it perfectly, and he’ll die on that hill.) It’s something like a floodgate opening, as they swap feelings of inferiority, and stress, and admit how they probably work themselves too hard. She tells of the anxieties that wrack her and freeze her in place, like watching herself make decisions through a glass wall. He speaks of the nights where the world overwhelms him and sleep becomes a distant memory. By the end of it, the tears shed are neither here nor there, but Sokka silently prays that the wall broken down between them might never have the opportunity to rebuild itself again. 

There’s a comfortable lull between them and he isn’t sure why he says it. 

“The old guy, next door to me, his nephew moved in a couple weeks ago. Our age.”

“Oh?” 

“Yeah.” Sokka shifts uncomfortably in his seat slightly. “Don’t think he likes me though.”

Yue frowns, temporarily pausing the small plait she’s braiding in her hair, “Have you spoken to him?”

“Yes. No. Well, yes, kind of. I write stuff on paper and hold it up, and sometimes he replies.” Sokka pauses, considering, “Okay. Once. Once, he replied.” He glances over as she raises an eyebrow. He sighs. “I spoke to him the night he arrived, he was just... waiting outside. In the middle of the night.” Both her eyebrows are raised now. “I know. Like, it’s like he was just.. _Sitting_ there, wondering if anyone would catch him.”

“Sounds familiar.” she teases. 

“Shut up.” He gives her arm a gentle nudge as a musical laugh escapes her. “He said his name’s Zuko.”

“Hm.” Yue stills and chews gently on her lip, “I know that name from somewhere.”

Her brow knits together as if she’s trying to figure out a particularly complex puzzle. Sokka knows the mystery she’s trying to solve all too well; he, too, had to admit that since that night there was something about Zuko he just couldn’t shake off. In the moments he’d catch himself watching through the window, he could never stop a voice in his head from insisting he _knew_ that face. At first, he’d put it down to deja vu, but the voice was too insistent. Something about Zuko held a specific history with Sokka, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what it was. It was only now occurring to him that perhaps he should have looked him up, researched the name on the off chance it drew together loose ends. The boy himself was pretty distinctive; a red scar covering half his face, faded from time but still remarkable, long black hair and burning amber eyes. The more Sokka starred the more convinced he grew that a face like that was impossible to forget. So why did he feel like he had? He makes a mental note to complete some internet searches whenever he finally gets home.

“Sokka? Hello?” Yue waves a perfectly manicured hand in front of his face, effectively breaking his train of thought. “I _said_ if he’s come to stay with his uncle out of the blue, and you’ve never seen him before right? Maybe he’s just going through something. Give him time.”

“Or _maybe_ ,” he bats her hand away, “he just hates me.”

She levels him with a stare. “He doesn’t hate you Sokka, he’d have to know you for that.” Sokka guffaws at the implication but before he can launch his rebuttal she cuts him off. “Why do you care anyway? He’s just your neighbour’s nephew, hardly a big deal.”

“Yue. I thought we’d been over this. You _know_ I need everyone to like me, like, all the time.”

She gives a wry smile and a knowing look that Sokka can’t quite decipher and exhales pointedly. “I don’t _know_ , you mentioned communicating via paper… signs or- whatever. Why don’t you just write your number on one and leave it out for him? Let him come to you.” 

Sokka opens his mouth indignantly then closes it again when no sound comes out. 

“I’m trying to _befriend_ him. Not ask him out, Yue!” He manages to splutter at last. 

“Friends give out their numbers!” She protests, and if Sokka thinks he sees a smirk breaking through then he’s just going to choose to ignore it. For his sanity. 

“Anyway,” she brushes him off, continuing, “think about it. I’m going back inside to bed.” It’s then, and only then, that Sokka finally spots the time - and winces. She steps out of the car and leans in over the window. “You better text me.” And on second thought, “Have fun with your enigma.” She throws a wink and then she’s gone, making her way back up the marble steps to the front door. She doesn’t see Sokka resolutely flipping her off as she walks away - but it makes him feel better, at least. 

All lights are out by the time he pulls up to the house with a clatter of the exhaust. Cutting his losses, he begins to make the familiar ascent up the trellising. Pulling himself through the slightly ajar window and turning on his heel to close it behind him, the sight he catches shouldn’t surprise him - but it does. The alarm clock by his bed reads some ridiculous hour of the morning, but across the garden, Zuko’s light is still on and his curtains remain open. He’s sat cross legged on his bed, hunched over, writing onto a pad of paper. Sokka sighs. It remains to be said why exactly it bothers him, maybe he just can’t understand it, but it seems Zuko’s aloof attitude gets under his skin more and more each day. He reaches for the nearest pad of his own. His hand lands on the one he knows he keeps by his bed in case inspiration strikes in the middle of the night - yes, an occurrence frequent enough that it warrants its own sketch pad - and he rips out a clean page. 

It’s only after he’s been staring at it, contemplating writing down the eleven digit number for spirits knows how long, that he’s stirred from his thoughts by the sound of distant banging on glass. Snapping his head up, curious blue eyes meet bashful gold ones, as Zuko stands at his window holding something that looks suspiciously like an invitation. 

**[ LONG NIGHT? ]**

He can only watch back in disbelief at first before his cognitive thinking kicks in. Zuko is staring at him intently, half frowning-half puzzled. Sokka changes the plans he had for the paper in his lap.

 **[ yeah. something like that ]** he offers back, along with a weak but genuine smile, grateful for some form of communication at last. Zuko nods thoughtfully then steps away from the window. For one stomach-sinking moment Sokka wonders if that’s the end, if that's all he’ll be graced with before returning to days of radio silence. Before he can spiral too far, the boy returns, pen and full pad in hand. 

**[ WHERE DO YOU GO? ]** he writes on the open page. Sokka can’t help but raise his eyebrows, the sudden inquisitiveness throwing him just slightly. He considers writing back a joke, or teasing Zuko for being nosey, then he remembers how fragile this conversation is and how rare it was to have Zuko speak to him in the first place - and firmly decides not to test his luck.

 **[visiting an old friend ]** he turns the paper round. He’s now resting against the window frame, perched slightly on the edge of his desk. Zuko appears to have made himself comfier too, opting instead for the combination of retreating back to his bed and writing in bigger letters. He nods wisely, but doesn’t make a move to offer anything in return. Sokka fills the gap. 

**[ why are you awake? ]** Zuko grimaces slightly and he wonders if it was the wrong move. But, after moments of hesitation that feel like tortuous hours, he responds regardless. 

**[ CAN’T SLEEP. FAMILY SHIT. ]**

Sokka knows that feeling. When his mother died, when they were nearly driven from home by the legal team of her opponent. When his father would argue on the phone until the early hours with Bato, back in the South Pole. When he would state his case to stay in the city time and time again “for the good of the kids”, when Sokka had to pretend he couldn’t hear every word. Then, he’d grown very familiar with what could only be described as “Can’t sleep. Family shit”. 

**[ is that why you’re here? with your uncle? ]** He writes back. If Zuko’s allowed to ask questions surely ( _surely_ ) he can too. Although it looks like he may not get an answer beyond the small, slightly apprehensive nod he gets in return. It says: _that barely touches the surface_ . It says: _I could go on, but I won’t_. Sokka wonders if Zuko meant for him to read so much into the nuance of a slight head movement and he pretends to not be a little disappointed at the predictably reserved response. Still, it’s accompanied by what Sokka would definitely describe as a minuscule wistful smile, so he’ll take it.

**[ he seems nice :) ]**

**[ HE IS. ]** Zuko hesitates, only holding the pad up half way before bringing it back into his lap to rectify his message. **[ HE IS. :) ]** The amended note reads. Sokka feels a slight smile of his own mirroring the paper. The small, somewhat cautious one appearing on the face hiding behind it doesn’t help matters either. 

They stay like that for a while, neither of them looking anywhere in particular, both seemingly lost in thought. Two entirely different people, existing, sitting in different worlds but tied together by some invisible string by the papers hanging limp in their laps. When Sokka eventually gets a subconscious urge to look up again, he tells himself it must simply be a coincidence that it happens directly as Zuko lifts up another page.

 **[ IT WAS NICE TALKING TO YOU. ]** And Sokka has to fight the urge to scoff, because that could barely be considered a conversation. But it’s a start. It’s ten steps further forward than he was that morning. And he can work with that, he thinks. 

**[ you too :) ]** He waits, and watches the other boy walk slowly back towards the window. Something about the action seems impossibly fascinating but he isn’t sure what, yet. **[ goodnight zuko ]** He tacks into his message as an afterthought, sensing things drawing to a close all too soon. 

His neighbor stops behind the glass as Sokka inches toward his own. He leans down to write something further. Eyes flicker back up to Sokka’s, then, a pause. There’s a moment, a fleeting flash of intensity; something feverish and bright flares behind the amber irises that watch him and there’s that familiar feeling again in his stomach. One that says _I’ve seen your face before_.

Sokka sighs and rubs his face, discarding his glasses on the desk. _Who are you?_ He tries desperately to convey through his eyes without saying it outright. Zuko seems to shake his own head, slightly, as if for himself and his traitorous brain wonders if he’s having the same thoughts. But the boy simply holds up one final sign - all fire extinguished and dulled, now replaced with a blanket of tiredness. Sokka squints across the distance to read it. 

**[ GOODNIGHT SOKKA :) ]** Is all he gets before he’s lost beyond the curtain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I’m sorry that this chapter was a lot of Sokka exposition, hopefully it was still fun to read. I promise that it was necessary, and that the next chapter will have _much_ more interaction between the two of them.  
> As always leave a comment if you enjoyed, and you can come yell at me to update on tumblr @ [tysukis](https://tysukis.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He watches the man shake his head sadly from the corner of his vision. “Allow yourself to have nice things, nephew. To be happy - that is the ultimate rebellion.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Sorry this ones a little late! It's a bit longer this time, so I hope that makes up for it :) Sorry for any typos, I'm editing this pretty late at night. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Trigger warning for non-explicit mentions of child and domestic abuse in this one, stay safe <3

_“Memory blurs, that’s the point. If memory didn’t blur you wouldn’t have the fool’s courage to do things again, again, again that tear you apart.”_

_\- Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys_

ZUKO

He’s been there a month before the subject of his father finally arises again. As Zuko understands it, the only necessary time for that conversation was the night he arrived on his uncle’s doorstep, empty handed and alone. As Iroh understands it, apparently, there are still things to be discussed. It’s a Sunday morning, bright and early, when he makes this opinion known. 

He knows it’s coming. Something about the introspective glint in his uncle’s eye the night before as he goes to bed. Something about the way he’s left to rise the next morning of his own accord, unrushed. Something about the smell of fresh roasted coffee wafting through a household that’s sworn loyalty is to tea. One look. Iroh is seated at the small kitchen table doing his best to look inconspicuous behind the puzzles section of the morning paper and he just _knows_.

The old man clears his throat with rehearsed caution. Zuko levels him over the cup of black liquid and holds his breath. “Your father,” _there it is_ , “called the house last night.”

Urging the small tremor in his fingers back down, and replacing the pot in the centre of the table, the breath he’s holding escapes his lungs at last with a shake. He doesn’t want to know, but he knows he has to ask. Ozai isn’t a patient man, and if he’s found him already then, he knows as well as anyone that his time is already limited. Zuko rests an elbow on the table and pinches the bridge of his nose. His eyes fall shut. Perhaps if he squeezes them tight enough he can block the whole world out, and seize to exist completely. 

In hindsight, he probably chose the most obvious place to run to. In his defence, there weren’t that many options. He wasn’t exactly _thinking_ when he boarded the bus - not beyond a voice in his head saying _get out of there_ over and over. And Iroh had been beyond welcoming: slotting him right back into his life as if he was never gone. As if it hadn’t been six years. As if they hadn't parted ways in a hospital bay, tears in his uncle's eyes, begging him not to make the choice they all knew he ultimately would. Over the past weeks, Zuko could nearly fool himself that he’d finally found solid ground. 

He’d never be that fortunate. 

The sentence leaves Iroh’s mouth and the earth uproots itself again. 

“What does he want.” It’s a statement, not a question. He wants something, because he always wants something. There’s not enough favours in the world for Ozai to cash in on and be satisfied. Zuko grew up watching people fall on their swords at his fathers mercy; handshakes that could snap wrists, agreements that could ruin lives. At least for them, it was usually in exchange for something. From Zuko they always came free. 

Iroh's stare goes hard and cold. He’s looking at the newspaper in resignation. They both knew this day would come, perhaps not this soon - but eventually. _Damage control_ he tells himself. It’s no difference to Ozai whether his son is alive or dead in a lake: that phone call most certainly wasn’t for his well being, he cares about the same thing he always has. His image - and how much of a threat Zuko poses to it.

“He wanted to know where you were, rest assured nephew - I did not tell him ‘here’.”

His eyes grow slightly wide at that. Lying to his father is like playing with an open flame. It’s always a mistake, and it always comes back to _burn_. 

Zuko would know that, better than most.

“Why would you-”

“Your father is a danger. To you especially.” Iroh’s words are curt, practiced almost, like he came expecting an argument. Zuko supposes that’s no surprise - he was never known for being the most compliant conversationalist. But, gradually, his tone softens - he seems to realise where he is. He finishes his speech looking directly into his nephew's eyes. “I will not stand to see him do this any longer. I know you have grown to fear him, but the risks I take are my own.” A hand reaches out, landing half across the table; there’s no physical touch, but it’s an invitation. A reassurance. “Please, you are safe here.”

Zuko falls silent. _Is this what it’s like to have somebody fight for you?_ He was never given such luxury, not since he was very young, not since his mother.. He was never _deserving_ of such a fight. He shakes his head. “I’m not worth-”

“You will _always_ be worth protecting.” 

The firm look is back, but Iroh’s demeanour stays gentle, and his hand doesn’t move. His uncle’s sincerity doesn’t cut like glass, not in the same way his fathers does. It’s more indicative of a strong hug, or the tight grip that pulls you back from traffic. He thinks he could grow to understand it.

The sun is much higher in the sky by the time Zuko returns to his bedroom. A glance across his window tells him that his neighbour has now finally woken too. At midday. He’s grown used to the familiar pattern, he’s making no effort to acknowledge it but it lives as a comforting constant in Zuko’s ever changing life. He’s sure the world would be ending the day Sokka wakes on a weekend _before_ 11am.

The boy is sitting at his desk, still in pyjamas, typing furiously away at something. His hair is scraped back into his, albeit slightly greasy, signature wolf tail and his glasses appear glued to his face. Zuko hasn’t seen them come off all week. In fact, he seems generally more dishevelled than usual lately. A small, traitorous part of his brain wonders if the boy’s okay.

His movements must be caught in Sokka’s peripheral, and his head snaps up as if on cue. He offers a smile and a small wave but there’s no real heart in it. Even from his distance, Zuko can see his eyes are slightly bloodshot. His face involuntarily contorts into a frown. 

No sooner has he made the mistake of showing non-passive emotion, Sokka is grabbing a sheet of paper from his desk. They’ve only communicated a handful of times, and Zuko would be happy to leave that number as it is - but when today’s message reads **[are u ok?]** it's that insolent part of his brain again that can’t resist the opportunity. He pulls free a piece of his own from the pad he’d bought a few days ago. He didn’t buy it to communicate with Sokka, _he didn’t_ ; but if the various, angrily crumpled up papers on the floor are any indication of its other uses - then that’s about all it’s been good for. He writes a response.

 **[ARE** **YOU** **?]**

Sokka seems taken aback slightly for a second, but _only_ a second, and you’d miss it if you weren’t watching him closely. So Zuko, of course, does not. Fast as anything, the surprise is concealed, as his face breaks into a laugh and he flips the paper over for his reply. Zuko wonders just how much practice he has doing that.

**[just exhausted. school applications. what’s your excuse?]**

The pen in Zuko’s fingers seems to hesitate on its own accord. 

**[YEAH. SOMETHING LIKE THAT.]** It’s a blatant lie; he already graduated well over a year ago. Sokka raises an eyebrow but, thankfully, doesn’t push. He just shrugs and gives a thumbs up, coupled with what Zuko assumes is supposed to be a sympathetic smile. He suddenly needs to do anything except look out of the window. 

Again, he tells that familiar voice to shut up. The one saying _‘it’s more than just applications’_. The one saying _‘something’s wrong, we know that look’_. It doesn’t matter. He has more than enough problems of his own. He sees how quick Sokka is to pretend - because, yes, Zuko _does_ know that look. And, if his neighbour wants so earnestly to keep up whatever charade he’s playing with himself, then he won’t be the one to interfere. It isn’t his place. They’re not even _friends_. By the time he turns around from unmaking and remaking his bed for no reason, Sokka has gone back to his computer. 

It isn’t until Tuesday evening that they speak again, slightly longer this time: words about the weather, favourite foods and films. Sokka’s smiles still don’t meet his eyes - but his laughter starts to look more genuine, even without the sound. 

And then again, a day later: random facts scribbled on paper for Zuko to wake up to. A singular one written back in response. 

Again: an extremely difficult game of noughts and crosses -

 **_[no_ ** **_MY_** **_left_ ** **_YOUR_** **_right]_ **

**_[THIS IS_ ** **_YOUR_** **_WORST IDEA YET]_ **

**_[don’t play it then :p] [wait] [zuko don’t close your curtains] [zuko wait] [ZUKO]_ **

Again: scribbled down quotes from books. Mainly Sokka’s - all Sokka’s. Zuko eyes up his own growing poetry collection but he never shares. An oblivious grin, growing brighter behind the pages of leather bound books, tells him he doesn’t need to. 

Again: physics tangents that make them resent their communication format. Zuko never understands a word. He buys a new notepad when his own runs out, all the same.

Again. It’s not personal, it just passes the time. Again. It _doesn’t_ make them friends. Again. Sokka starts sleeping more regularly. Again. Zuko’s father stops calling.

The question ‘are you okay’ vanishes from conversation. It doesn’t come up for a very long time. 

When Sokka gets home it’s already dark. Zuko’s curtains sit open, he couldn’t tell you why - perhaps out of thinly veiled concern, perhaps out of curiosity. The strange relief he feels when a familiar figure flops down onto the blue comforter in the adjacent room, confuses even him. The voice in his head is back. He won’t say anything tonight, he doesn’t have the energy - doubts either of them do, but he does offer a wave when Sokka turns onto his side and locks their eyes together. It’s a mistake. 

**[why are you still up?]**

Zuko raises an eyebrow. Not tonight. He’s tired. And, though he may be past the point of ignoring Sokka as easily as he used to, he reserves the right to make this conversation as short and painless as possible. 

**[GOOD POINT. GOODNIGHT. :)]** He adds the smiley face as an afterthought when he feels a little too mean, and wonders who the fuck he’s turning into. 

**[wait] [can we talk?]**

Zuko sighs. That’s what he gets for not closing his curtains fast enough. **[WHAT ABOUT?]**

He watches as Sokka starts to fidget. _Huh_. That's new. His neighbour is a lot of things, but anxious isn’t exactly the first word that would come to mind. Sokka is extroverted, loud (somehow) even behind two layers of double glazing. Optimistic to a fault, even when his eyes tell a different story. Sokka doesn’t get this nervous, not externally - not with it openly written on his face. But it comes to him now almost as second nature; Zuko files it away with the rest of Sokka’s more private emotions he seems to have almost _earned_ an access to. He’s still choosing not to think too deeply into that one.

He tries again. 

**[SOKKA?]**

He’s pointedly looking anywhere that involves the ground and not Zuko. He’s raking a hand through his hair, gradually pulling it loose. The other one continues to write, picking up speed, as if he’s afraid to lose his nerve. He beholds four signs in relatively quick succession.

**[sorry]**

**[I’ve just had a long day]**

**[I could use the distraction]**

**[we don’t have to]**

Zuko gets it. Somehow, through evenings of awkward jokes and unwanted ‘fun maths facts’ - he gets it. You’d have to be blind to not see the way Sokka’s mood had started to lift. Or maybe not blind, maybe you’d just have to care less. He wonders when exactly he stopped doing that.

Finding himself at the epicentre of his neighbours ‘distractions’ definitely wasn’t part of his plan. Running away from home was in the plan. Living with his uncle was in the plan. Speaking every night with the boy in the opposite window was not in the plan. _Sokka_ was not in the plan. Adding new variables is a dangerous endeavour, he knows this, it’s stupid. Zuko lives his whole life on the precipice of running and hiding and to stop, even momentarily, even to form a bond as shaky as this, is a fool's errand. Nothing but a waste of both parties' time. At best. He chances another look at the face that stares out at his own; the face that’s met him where he stands for so many nights, a face that knows anguish - but not _Zuko’s_ anguish, the first face to coax laughter from him in weeks. It wears an expression that looks dangerously like hope. 

He’s making another mistake. 

Ties to a life he knows he ultimately can’t afford. Befriending Sokka is a waste of time. 

He should say all this.

But he doesn’t.

He writes **[OKAY]** and his conscience screams. 

Sokka pulls a phone from his pocket and starts to write. He can only look on in helpless confusion, and pray the next message comes before he changes his mind. It does, but only just, and as soon as Zuko reads it he regrets the whole ordeal. A phone number, coupled with the words ‘call me? :)’ at the bottom. He hesitates, and that seems to be all it takes for Sokka to cringe at his own wording. He scribbles down something new. 

**[sorry. I’m just really exhausted. If you wanna talk like this then that’s okay]**

The return of Sokka’s low mood, thinly veiled by ‘exhaustion’, is almost enough to warrant sympathy from him. If provoked, he would tell people that’s why he does what he does next.

“Zuko?” 

Sokka’s voice is audibly sleepy when he picks up immediately on the first ring. It’s his second time he’s hearing it, but it still seems to make something in him jump. Zuko curses his reflexes as he finds himself so guarded, all of it triggered simply by someone saying his name. It’s a few moments before the word echoes out again. 

“Zuko.” Sokka has moved from his relaxed position to sitting bolt upright on his bed, legs swinging over the edge, staring directly at him. “Are you okay?”

“I thought this wasn’t about me.” He manages to respond dryly, at last. The other boy smiles for what Zuko assumes might be the first time all day - and a small part of him wants to be proud for eliciting the response. He pushes the thought down. 

“You wanted a distraction?” He tries to keep the same level tone, spirits be damned if he lets Sokka know he’s concerned about him, if Zuko had his own way - he wouldn’t be.

“Oh,” the sheepish mannerisms are back, “yeah. Um. I guess- I guess I just wanted to talk? About.. Stuff.”

“ _Stuff._ ” Zuko repeats slowly, punctuating the word with another eyebrow raise. 

“Yeah! Uh you- you seem like a pretty wise dude, so...”

He tries very hard to disguise his shock at the statement. He’s doing a terrible job of it, but Sokka still seems too preoccupied with his own embarrassment to notice. Good. Perhaps he can play it off then, as if his head isn’t swimming at the notion. “It’s the scar, isn’t it? That’s what makes me look so _sagacious_?”

The way Sokka flounders at his joke is almost enough to bring out a smile of his own; the corner of his lip twitching into a small smirk. 

“I mean- uh- well no- but- I mean-” he stutters. Zuko lets him, for a handful of minutes, it’s too amusing not to, before he sets the conversation back on track.

“Sokka. Sokka. Sokka!” the line goes silent, “I’m _kidding._ It’s okay stop- stop panicking. The scar thing was a _joke_.” And then as an afterthought, “I don’t think I’m really that wise though. But go ahead, I guess.”

Really, Zuko really should have known better than to assume he’d get to the point as quickly as that. His neighbour, of course, launches into one tangent after the next, partly stalling and partly just distracted, and it’s only after what must be at least an hour of ramblings and venting over schoolwork that he finally gets the information he’s looking for. 

Sokka sighs and stares up at the ceiling. “Do you ever wish you were someone else? Like, literally, anybody else?” And yeah, _that’s_ a familiar feeling.

“I mean. Yes. I think we all do. That’s normal, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

Zuko considers. “I may not be the best baseline example for this.” 

He hears, rather than sees Sokka snort at his response, and it’s a pleasant change. He’s lying down on his own bed, now, a mirror image. 

“My little sister- I have a sister- Katara. She’s like this.. Great water bending prodigy. The first to come from our tribe in years. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, honestly, I guess I just- it’s hard to feel _enough_ when you grow up next to someone like that, you know?” Not for the first time since leaving, Zuko thinks of Azula. Azula, with her sharp smile and cold stare. With perfect flames and forks of lightning. With Ozai’s praise whilst he faced shame. He does know, he knows all too well. “Anyway,” Sokka continues, oblivious, “I used to be really jealous of her as a kid. I thought I grew out of that, like, years ago. But now I’m filling out all these applications, I’m practically having to _pitch_ myself to these schools, like, car salesman style, and Katara… she’s not gonna have to do _any_ of this. All she’s gotta do is bend, like, a fucking cup of water and anywhere will take her on the spot.” 

He feels a pang of sympathy for the boy. As much as he can relate to having a sibling that outshines you, Zuko still has his bending. It might not be as polished as Azula’s, but he has it. And that’s clearly more than Sokka. Even here, even in the very place he's afraid - ashamed - to display it, he can bring light to dark rooms, he can warm up cold bodies and no one can take that away from him. He thinks of Sokka, who’s clearly had to fight tooth and nail for the same opportunities as himself. For the same opportunities as his own _sister_. Yet when he speaks her name it’s still full of love, even when he’s angry. How complex that must be. Something like guilt settles in his stomach. 

“Your sister.. is a water bender.” He confirms slowly, treading carefully all the way, “And you’re not?” 

Sokka scoffs, “No. The spirits didn’t give me bending powers. They knew with it, I’d be too powerful.”

He can’t help the bemused laugh he lets out; he could only wish it worked like that. Agni knows, if spirits gave any kind of shit about that logic, he probably would have had a much nicer childhood. 

“Bending isn’t everything.” He says reluctantly, and he resents the hypocrisy that statement carries with it.

“I guess.. Feels like it though.” 

Zuko hums noncommittally. This is dangerous territory, and he knows it. A conversation about bending is a slippery slope to his identity. For the first time, he wonders if perhaps that would be the worst thing - the words _water bending_ and _our tribe_ pull him up short. Sokka might know some of his pain, Sokka who would probably have some choice words about his father and some comforting sentiment about Zuko not needing him. But, it’s _Sokka_ , who no doubt knows his fathers impact - even if impersonally. The back of Zuko’s mind vaguely recalls one of Ozai’s successes, a valour encrusted story told to him when he was a child. It’s almost too long ago for him to remember the details, but he tries to anyway. It’s the tale of a water tribe woman, a lawyer with her sights set on taking his father down. They spoke of her ignorance, her arrogance, her inability to appreciate the ‘amazing work’ he did. They spoke of her challenging him, of a potential trial, of corruption. Then, a year later, they spoke of her death. Of Ozai's loyal followers. Of those who, _‘Although I cannot legally condone them, my son, they are brave people. Strong people, with beliefs. They stand up for what is right, do what needs to be done. One day, you might do the same.’_ The guilt in his body turns to nausea. _Water bending. Our tribe._ He wonders if Sokka ever knew her. 

Zuko changes the subject.

“Where do you go?”

“Hm?”

“You’re always out late. Where do you go?”

“Oh.” Sokka lets out a half hearted laugh, “I usually just drive. There’s a lookout point a few miles from here, you can see all of Republic City lit up at night. I usually go there, I guess.”

“Sounds nice.” He closes his eyes and tries to imagine the view. “What’s it like?”

“Uh. Beautiful, yeah, all the lights. Like a million tiny stars.” Zuko yawns, gently, but doesn’t speak. After a while, Sokka continues, “I suppose it's good because, you know, not like there’s that many stars - light pollution and all that. So it makes up for it, in a way. Ironic.”

He feels his brow furrow even in his relaxed state. “There’s no stars?”

“Well, no, I mean. There’s stars but there’s not- _stars_.”

Zuko sighs, “You’ve lost me. Stars are stars.”

“No.” And he can hear the vehement shaking of Sokka’s head, even through the phone line. 

“In the South Pole, there're so many stars, it’s like a blanket. Like, someone spilled glitter into the sky. Constellations and shit, you know? A horizon more twinkling white than it is black. _Those_ are stars.” Zuko can almost hear the frown in his voice. “If you think all stars are the same, I kinda feel sorry for you.” 

He snorts. “Don’t. Enough people do that already.” He’s sure he hears Sokka opening his mouth to ask a question, but he cuts him off with one of his own, 

“You’re from the South Pole, then?”

“Oh.” Sokka seems to hesitate, resistant to let his own query go, but eventually he does. “Uh. Yeah. I suppose. We left when I was very little, after Katara was born. My parents wanted a fresh start and Republic City was just _all the rage_ -”

“You don’t like it here?”

“No, I do!” He blurts out in defence, “I mean. It’s nice, but I miss it? I guess? I don’t know. Things were just easier back there.”

“Maybe because you were a child.” Zuko tries not to sound too condescending, he does, but if anyone’s an expert on how responsibilities will follow you no matter _where_ you go - it’s him. It’s a while before he gets any response; Sokka’s either ignoring him or deeply considering the suggestion. 

“Yeah,” his neighbour suddenly sounds very far away, “maybe.” 

“I definitely miss the sky though.” He adds on, after another period of silence.

“Mm. Yeah. It sounds nice... Pretty.”

“ _Very_ pretty.” Sokka corrects him, and if Zuko’s eyes were open, he’d roll them. 

He feels the first wave of sleep creep through around the time the subject changes from stars to ice, Sokka’s soft spoken voice indicating a similar level of tiredness. He tells Zuko tales from summers past spent visiting their tribe; ice fishing to sledding, all seasoned with amusing anecdotes and quips (Sokka laughs at all his own jokes, as usual). By the time his consciousness is oozing away from his grasp, the boy is still talking but barely in a whisper. Zuko lets the exhaustion take him, slipping from reality at last. He dreams of ice, snow and frost, something glittering and so very far away. 

“Prince Zuko..”

Piece by piece the word comes slowly back to him. A cold breeze from a freshly opened window. The sounds of birds. Honey sunlight dripping through the curtains. A distant voice, growing closer, accompanied with careful steps. He can’t quite make out the words yet. Almost sounds like-

“Prince Zuko”

He stirs only a moment longer before he finds himself awake all at once, the form of endearment gnawing at him in a way that is somehow both comforting and repulsive. “You haven’t called me that since I was little.” Zuko tries not to bite out, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. It isn’t his uncle's fault. Sadly, that fact doesn’t seem to make the twisting in his gut lessen at all. He runs a hand through his hair and grimaces at the tangles his fingers find instantly; his mind working quickly to rouse last night's memories from their sleepy haze and slot them back into place. He hadn’t had time to braid it, or even tie it up at all, because… _oh_. 

His phone lies beside him, battery dead. Another grimace. _Right_. 

Iroh, unassuming as always, barrels on. 

“You always were so strong willed.” He smiles wistfully, handing Zuko a steaming cup. “So determined.”

“I was a brat.” He retorts, taking it and bringing the hot liquid up to his lips. It tastes of something warm and vaguely spiced; just on the right side of burning. 

“You were a _child_.”

He holds his face to the cup and inhales the steam deeply, waving his right to reply. Talking about his family, his childhood, anything personal at all - has never come naturally to Zuko. Not really. Not often. Not _usually_. His eyes wander traitorously back down to the blank phone screen. The discomfort within him grows.

Sokka had told him so much of his life, words and stories falling from his lips like water - and Zuko told him nothing. 

Not quite nothing, almost nothing, but just a small enough amount of something that it was probably almost worse. He took Sokka’s secrets with hardly a sentence in exchange. He accepted Sokka’s trust as the last person to deserve it. He plugs his phone into its cable and resolutely turns away from it. 

He watches his uncle throw the curtains further open, instead. 

“Ah.” Iroh smiles privately to himself, “It seems someone is awake.” 

Zuko cranes his neck around to share his view. Sokka is hopping, full speed, around his bedroom, darting from desk to wardrobe to bookshelf - a tornado of blue plaid and brown hair. Zuko checks the time beside him. **9:34**. So that explains it. 

There’s something vaguely invasive about secretly watching his neighbour panic frantically over being late for class, so he diverts his attention back to Iroh. Iroh, who is no longer looking out of the window, but instead directly at him, a small smile still playing on his lips. 

“What?” 

“I am just thinking, nephew, you seem to have grown quite attached to that boy. You are friends?”

Zuko glares in spite of himself. He isn’t ready to think about that. He isn’t ready to think about the _repercussions_ of that. The inherent danger that comes with it. He isn’t ready for any of it. Zuko rises with the sun, he’s never intentionally slept in a day in his life - right now he would love nothing more. “I don’t need friends.” He grits out.

“Ah.” Iroh strokes his beard, the expression he wears is almost insufferable. “Perhaps. But to want and to need are two very different things indeed, Prince Zuko.”

“Okay, then I don’t _want_ friends, either.” he barks out, what little patience he was gripping onto now fizzling away, “ _Stop_ calling me that.” 

Something slightly forlorn flickers over his uncle’s face, but it’s gone no later than it arrives, smoothed over into a placating smile. He nods, simply, and, apparently sensing the conversation is over, heads back towards the door. It’s only by the threshold that he stops. His uncle turns and watches him from over his shoulder. He’s glaring at the wall, but he can feel eyes on him all the same. 

“Your father cannot harm you anymore, Zuko. The only control he gets now, is the sort you give him yourself. The ability to hang over you, even in his absence.” He watches the man shake his head sadly from the corner of his vision. “Allow yourself to have nice things, nephew. To be happy - that is the ultimate rebellion.”

Long after he’s gone, the words linger in his mind. An unstoppable echo. 

He doesn’t write or read. He barely eats. He sits on the floor, back resting against his bed, well out of view of his window, and Zuko tries to _think_. 

He nurtures the small flame in his palm as he times it’s rise and fall with his breathing. It glows hopefully, smooth swaths of red and orange curling around his fingers. There was always something astonishingly beautiful about fire, breath-taking even in the wake of all its destruction. Magical in the deadliest sense of the word, the hardest element to tame. To many, fire bending was a gift, but to Zuko it was a right - one that must be earned. He still bore the scars from the privilege of doing so. A small white line licks up his wrist. Last night, Sokka had spoken, in between yawns, of his sister’s first bending experience. A small child, newly walking, manipulating the surface of a puddle. A cute story, the type passed down in generations, accompanied by faded photographs and wistful smiles. Zuko’s had been far less kind. 

He was a child, sitting in the gaudy training room at the back of their estate. The walls were lined with golden trophies, and pictures of his father, much younger than he was then. Memoirs from victorious matches, bearing shark tooth grins. Most areas outlawed bending as a vicious sport long before Zuko was even born. It left only one place to withhold the tradition, the only city in the world inherently cruel enough to allow battles to the near death. And they did it for honour, for _entertainment_. Zuko’s mother privately called it barbaric. Azula called her soft. But rumours often spread; those who dared be brave enough said Ozai was a fraud. A spoilt brat from a wealthy family, with money and ties and power. Just enough to convince even the most respectable opponent to throw a match. Zuko has only seen his father fight in person once, and he doesn’t remember enough to make an assessment - but it makes no difference. After all, what did the truth matter when, amongst the decorated walls stood the biggest display of them all: an obnoxious portrait of a young man, complete with an almost sadistic smile, and the words “Ozai Sozin, Agni Kai Champion”. As soon as he could walk, he was forced to stand beneath that plaque every day as various “trainers” encouraged him to bend. A cacophony of berating and exhaustive sighs. At first, he couldn’t do it, then, Azula grew of age and steadfastly overtook him. The days spent in that room quickly turned into lectures about honour - his father pacing before him, words dripping with venom and disgust. His mother trying to make peace, arguments heard afterhours of _he’s just a child_. They always preceded the noise of a hand against skin. Gentle crying. Most nights, Zuko fell asleep in his mothers arms, and pretended he couldn’t feel her shaking. 

Eventually, it happened; shaking and crying gave way to a blinding light. A searing, white hot pain snaking up his arm. A flare from a balled up fist as he screamed and screamed. Later, as the family doctor bandaged him up, his father would look on, with an expression like pride but altogether more sinister. _A promise of more to come._ He wouldn’t see that look again until the year he turned thirteen. Zuko can still feel the heat, still see it, even now. 

The flame in his hand warms his face as he snaps back to the present before him. He gently ushers it down from it’s growing state back to pulsing peacefully again. In. Out. In. Out. He’s never had much luck regulating his emotions, but he finds this helps. In. Out. He breathes. In. Out. He thinks. In. Out. He pictures Iroh’s words again. Considers what they entail - if it could really be enough to maybe just exist, and to exist happily. He thinks of his father and his band of fascist followers. Wonders if it’s a world he can live in, if it’s a world he _has_ to live in. What would it be like, to break free from it, to find reasons in smaller things, to find his purpose in love and not spite? He thinks of Sokka, and the way he wants to know him, even when Zuko doesn’t want to know himself. Sokka, and the smile he wears in the face of adversity. Sokka, and the hope he has for everyone, for everything, despite the cards he’s given. Does Zuko have it in him to pollute such a sanguine existence with the baggage he carries? Does he ever think that too? He watches the fire burn down to an ember until it’s gone completely. And then he just sits there. Breathing. Thinking. _In. Out._

His phone rings so suddenly and violently that he almost drops it trying to press the ‘accept’ button on the screen. Sokka's voice breaks through the line. 

“Get up. We’re going for a drive.”

Zuko’s head snaps up almost impulsively; somewhere, a distant muscle in his neck resents him for it. His new friend is already toeing on his shoes and lacing them up, phone sandwiched in the crook between his head and neck. 

“We are?” he asks, when his brain finally catches up with events unfurling around him. “Where?” 

Sokka makes a point to roll his eyes, exaggerating it enough to be seen from the distance, then he hops off his bed and starts distractedly looking around for something - keys, Zuko assumes.

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” 

“Second place only to my sense of survival.” He deadpans in response, although he’s already stood up and is pulling a jumper over his loose cotton T-shirt in anticipation of the weather. He glances down momentarily at the flannel pyjama bottoms that accompany it. 

“They’ll do.” The voice comes again, the owner of it now leaning against his window, keys in hand, clearly picking up on Zuko’s internal dilemma. He suddenly feels impossibly self conscious, fighting an embarrassed blush off his cheeks as he wilts slightly under the stare. “Honestly, you’re fine. It’s only me. Put some shoes on,” He watches as Sokka hooks a foot over his window ledge, “and meet me by the car.”

The journey is a quiet one. By choice, of course, and not entirely - the tinny sound from the car radio fills an otherwise silence with comforting white noise. They’re driving for twenty minutes, and then it’s Zuko who breaks it. 

“So, are you going to tell me why you’ve kidnapped me?”

Sokka scoffs slightly, eyes still trained on the road. He taps along with the music absentmindedly as he steers. “I didn’t _kidnap_ you, you came willingly. You can’t kidnap someone that chooses to join you.”

He hums and turns his attention back towards the window, “There didn’t seem to be much of a choice. Sounds like excuses to me.” 

Sokka slows the car down slightly at that, not enough to cause an accident, but enough for his passenger to notice. 

“Would you like to get out and walk home? This is your opportunity.” It’s an empty threat, he’s already accelerating back to their previous speed, but Zuko glares at him all the same. They continue on, perhaps for ten more minutes at the most, turning off the main road and ascending a steep hill, streetlight poking through an overhead canopy of trees. Eventually, as those lights become fewer and the terrain beneath gets rougher, he tries his luck again. 

“Is this where you take all your hostages, then?”

“Spirits, Zuko, _shut up_.” There’s a laugh in Sokka’s voice as he leans over the console to playfully shove his arm. It’s the first physical contact either of them has ever made. Zuko rubs at his own bicep feigning injury, and the touch burns like a mark. 

“We’re here!” Sokka announces, somewhat triumphantly, as they pull into a small off road area by a very unstable looking fence. Even from the safety of his seat, Zuko can gauge that it’s a long way down. He fixes a hard stare on the dashboard and swallows down any impending vertigo. 

“Fuck,” Sokka mumbles, putting together his general lack of response and unmatched enthusiasm, “Shit. Sorry. Are you- scared of heights? Sorry, I should have checked. We can go-”

“No.” He couldn’t say what part of him wants to stay, but evidently it’s a large one. Zuko forces his eyes to look up through the window and-

Oh. 

A million tiny stars. 

“This is your lookout spot.” he nearly whispers, suddenly afraid a louder tone might puncture the atmosphere. 

“Yeah.” Sokka flashes him a soft smile. “You’ve not been around all day, you seemed like you needed it.” Familiar guilt churns beneath the surface, Zuko forces it back down. _To be happy - that is the ultimate rebellion._

“Sorry, I saw your texts, I meant to reply, I’ve just been. Um. Feeling.”

“Feeling?”

“Yeah, you know, emotions?” He winces at his own awkwardness. There’s a reason he doesn’t have conversations like this. 

Sokka looks like he’s trying very hard not to laugh in disbelief. “Yeah, Zuko,” he starts slowly, eyes wide as if he’s waiting for some other shoe to drop, “I know emotions.”

A blanket of quiet settles around them. All Zuko knows at this moment are the lights glittering through the city and the soft sounds of Sokka humming along to the radio. It’s warm despite the winter air. It’s calm despite the traffic below. It’s safe despite... 

A voice in his head screams to leave, run whilst he still has the chance. A lack of connections will make this easier. The less ties he makes here the better. It warns him of past errors, miscalculations, it begs him not to go through it all again. 

_To be happy - that is the ultimate rebellion._

The voice isn’t loud enough. 

He takes a deep breath. 

He starts down his own road to ruin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Again, sorry for the late update! We should be back to saturday updates now after this :) Leave a comment, if you like or you can talk to me on tumblr @[tysukis](http://tysukis.tumblr.com/) <3


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Future Scarlet here editing this to say that I’m currently on a small hiatus from this fic whilst I do other stuff, I’m not entirely sure when the next update will be - hopefully sooner rather than later, but thank you for following along so far! :)  
> Just a quick note, because I have been asked about it: the world I'm setting this AU in uses the place names from the atla-verse, but its design is more of my own. So, think of it somewhere between the areas in avatar and your more typical modern au setting. Place names and some details (including bendng) are canonical, but general content and layout not so much. I hope that clears things up!  
> Anyway, enjoy! <3

_The most tragic form of loss […] is the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different._

_\- Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope_

SOKKA 

At 11 am, Sokka has grown used to a wash of cold air and a slow sun breaking the horizon. As the spring and summer months creep into view, he’s afforded such luxury less and less. He drags the quilt up, higher, further past his eye line, until he’s immersed fully in a cotton cocoon. It’s then that his phone goes off. 

He thrusts a hand out from under his covers, reluctantly, not out of want but more of a need for the incessant blaring to cease. At last, he finds the cold glass screen and pulls it to his ear, shuddering at the freezing contact. A semi-amused, semi-concerned tone crackles through the line. 

“Are you going into hibernation over there?”

“Why the fuck are you awake dude?”

“At 11 am?”

He groans in protest at the time. 

“Good morning to you, too.”

Sokka sticks the top of his head out from the covers and glares through the window. He can’t make out much with his short-sighted vision, but you could probably be blind and still see Zuko’s smug grin. He’s leaning against his window looking out into Sokka’s general direction. From this angle, he can’t see his scar. Just the right profile of his face - all chiselled features, empty eyes and placated smiles; the poster child for “I’m alright”. He takes up this stance often during their conversations, Sokka thinks it’s unlikely to be a coincidence. 

He sits up, rubbing his eyes and fumbling around for where he left his glasses the previous night. With them on, he can see Zuko in a much clearer light, and, yes, he is indeed smiling insufferably. As if he doesn’t even realise it. It’s rare to get a genuine grin out of his neighbour, but an expression Sokka has grown far more privy to is this one; a private, small smile - not obnoxious, but still unmistakably intriguing. He thinks that perhaps Yue might have been right to dub him an enigma all those weeks ago. 

To anyone who knew him less, Zuko was a carbon cut mystery. And the small secretive looks he shared with himself, the ones he made when he assumed nobody to be paying attention, only stood to solidify this. Sokka _was_ paying attention, always. And to him, this was just Zuko. Zuko, who loved poetry and theatre and liked small dogs but mainly cats. Zuko, who had a secret sweet tooth. Zuko who often talked about anybody but himself, who sometimes spoke of his mother, but only with sad eyes. Zuko, who was running. Sokka didn’t know who, or what from, but he was definitely running. He had been his whole life. He wasn’t an enigma, he was just alone. 

“I rise with the sun.” he answers, sounding suddenly far away. If Sokka were standing closer, his eyes would probably be glossed over in that familiar way they sometimes are. It often happens on their midnight drives, journeys through lights and trees to a place that time fails to puncture. Happens whenever Zuko dares to divulge information about his life before… before. It’s small strings and untraceable scraps, and the stories are always punctuated by a vacant stare. 

“Why’s that?” Sokka tries to break him from his thoughts. In a way, it works. Zuko’s face snaps back to the window, something thinly-veiled flaring up behind his expression. But he doesn’t open up, he simply adjusts the way in which he shuts himself down. 

“I don’t know. There’s lots of sun where I’m from, so-”

“Caldera?” Sokka asks, simple as anything. He doesn’t expect Zuko to blanch the way he does: abruptly fumbling for words, tripping over sentences. Eventually, he just frowns. Looks with renewed confusion. To look, at all, seems physically painful for him to do. 

“How did you know?”

Sokka’s eyebrows knit together, “Uh. I mean, you’ve mentioned it being sunny before, you’ve mentioned coming here on a bus... And like, I know, Caldera’s _far_ but- it’s like the only place where the weather’s hot... but you could still travel to it without a boat.” _If you like nine hour-long journeys,_ he adds in his head. When his suspicions first arose about his neighbour's place of origin, it only took a couple of internet searches to determine that whatever Zuko was leaving behind, it was _bad_. Had to be. The bus trip from Caldera to Republic City, and the _outskirts_ at that, was not one you took for leisure purposes. That night had been the first time Sokka thought he might finally _understand_. Why Zuko diverted his questions, why he always clammed up about his home life, why he never mentioned his childhood when Sokka so often waxed lyrical about his own. 

But he still loved to learn and, by the same stretch, he longed to know. He _lived_ to collect information. These particularly rare pieces of it, pieces of _Zuko_ , have become as valuable to him as any precious stone or metal. He holds onto them with an impermeable grip. 

The other boy just shakes his head, not in denial but more in defeat. Sokka decides to swiftly draw a line under it. A voice shouts him from another room.

“WHAT?” he calls back, holding the phone away from his face and shooting an apologetic look out of the window. Katara’s voice rings loud and true. 

“YOU SAID YOU’D TAKE ME TO PRACTISE TODAY.”

And, fuck, he did say that. He turns to stare at his reflection when he knows the result already. Not awful, but washing his hair wouldn’t kill him. The mirror by his door stands to tell him just as much, he glances at the clock and winces. 

“SOKKA!”

No time.

“OKAY. OKAY.” His cognitive functions finally kick in as he starts looking around for a clean pair of jeans. Somewhere, in the very back of his mind, he’s conscious that Zuko is still on the phone. When he flings his bedroom door open, one sock on, one in his hand, he’s somewhat unsurprised to see his sister standing in the adjacent doorway, arms folded, glaring. He tosses her his keys. 

“Wait in the car, I’ll be out in five-”

“Sokka..” 

“We won’t be late! Shoo!” He gestures at her to move along with his sock-holding hand. 

“Sorry,” his phone is wedged between his shoulder and neck as he sits down to don his shoes. The sound Zuko lets out resembles something _like_ a chuckle, but slightly more uncomfortable.

“It’s okay.” the boy replies, “You gotta go?”

“Uh yeah.” He cringes when he finally has the ability to make eye contact again, “Sorry to cut things off so suddenly, I mean, unless-” a lightbulb flashes through his brain. A stupid, impractical, rash one - but a lightbulb all the same.

“Unless..?” Zuko is leaning further towards the window now, eye contact unfaltering. His expression looks so open and unguarded - Sokka calculates a couple of things in his mind. Here’s what he knows:

  1. He’s been in communication with Zuko for a few months now, he knows him to be a good guy; calm, quiet. Definitely on the brooding side of things. Or maybe not brooding, but, introspective. And thoughtful. And kind. Okay, he broods _a little_ \- but it’s not a crime. 
  2. They’ve already been out on journeys like this before; this is nothing new. Not to him, not to them. Peaceful quiet trips reserved for nothing more than gentle conversation and the buzz of the radio. Sokka’s learnt a lot from these, they’re quickly growing to be one of his favourite things.
  3. Katara does _not_ know Zuko, not to his knowledge at least. Come to think of it, she hasn’t really made an effort to. But that’s alright, she’s just busy, really - he’s doing her a favour. 
  4. There’s no real reason Katara wouldn’t like him. See point #1. Sokka’s a good judge of character and if he likes him, she will too. 
  5. Zuko is already dressed, and probably settling in for another day of scowling at his phone, or throwing balled up paper haphazardly in the direction of his bin. 



The decision, in the end, is a no brainer. 

“Unless you came with me?” the words pour out like waves, dominoes of sentences tumbling one after the next, “- With us, I mean. Katara needs to go to class and I said I’d take her, but I’m gonna be bored as fuck, like, and it’s only an hour, so no point coming all the way home _just_ to go back again, you know? So if you wanted to?” by the time his ramblings taper off, Zuko is staring back at him through the glass with wide eyes. Sokka fights the urge to back peddle. He does a little, anyway.

“I mean you don’t have to? I’ve just been kinda busy this week... If you wanted to hang out-” he’s approximately 0.20 seconds away from telling him to forget the whole thing when Zuko breaks his internal panic with a small hum. 

“Uncle probably won’t miss me if I’m only gone an hour..” he seems to be talking to himself more than anything. Sokka tries not to wince when he hears Katara laying on the horn outside. “I’ll come.”

“I understand- oh.” 

First, he freezes, he hadn’t exactly banked on agreement. Then he falters slightly. 

Because Zuko’s pulling a jacket on, and he’s reaching for his wallet, and he’s _smiling_ at him. A small, timid, genuine smile.

He grins back unashamedly.

Ten minutes into the journey, Sokka realises his mistake. When Zuko had first slipped into the back seat behind them. Katara had almost definitely shot him a _look_ , but he’d merely smiled, and shrugged. When he’d introduced them, her tone had been pleasant enough. But you don’t pay meticulous attention (not in the way Sokka does) and _not_ grow to spot the intricacies in people’s demeanour. For Katara: listening for short clipped sentences, almost overly polite, were usually the easiest way to pick up on her discomfort. For Zuko: his voice was always smooth, level; perfectly poised - perfectly rehearsed. But his eyes gave it all away. Even the blank, glazed over look, which they so often took up, told a thousand words. Sokka wouldn’t be able to see much of anything in his eyes right now even if he tried to, because they were trained on the floor of his car. Which, in itself, is his answer. They’ve stayed there since they left. Since Katara nodded at him, a thin ribbon of ice lacing through her tone as she made pleasantries. He prays silently that Zuko isn’t as observant as he is. 

He watches his wishes fail to come true. 

By the time they’re five minutes out from the centre, their third companion appears to have forgotten he’s there entirely, lost amongst the scenery. Sokka watches from the rearview. With every step deeper into his thoughts, his face betrays an overwhelming emotion; _I really don’t want to be here._ Across from him, his sister remains indifferent, staring ahead, hard. Sokka switches gears and swallows his anger down. 

They climb the steps in silence. The training centre looks the same as it ever has, a large towering feature in the heart of the city. Attached to the right side is an old, large, dome-shaped coliseum; once used for battles, before the practice was outlawed. Now it stands as a home for learning, performances and the occasional friendly bending match - nothing close to the bloodshed it once harboured. Sokka vaguely remembers learning in a world history class once, how the fire nation was the only area to retain the tradition. How they refused to give it up in accordance with the other nations and cities. Agni Kais, they called them. He wondered then, as he often still does now, why anyone would clutch to such a barbaric sport. He thinks of Zuko, hailing from Caldera, waiting for him in the car, with a large mottled scar painting half of his porcelain features. And then he catches Katara’s arm before she can avoid him in his daydream state.

“What the _fuck_ was that?” Zuko probably can’t hear them from where he’s left the vehicle, but the words come out as a hiss nonetheless. His sister looks at him blankly, pulling away from his grip. “What was _what_?”

“Don’t play dumb with me! He’s done _nothing_ to you!” Sokka pulls his hand away, “Why d’you have to be so cold?”

He isn’t sure what, but something in his sentence must ignite a chain reaction. He watches as Katara’s face flickers from shock, to indignance, to anger in no more than three second flat. She takes a deep breath, and her face is back to neutral when she leans in to respond. Her tone betrays her alarm. 

“ _Listen_ , if you want to run around making friends with- with _him..._ That’s fine, good for you. But don’t you dare- don’t _dare_ try to tell me he isn’t dangerous, Sokka.” Her voice breaks out into something far more characteristically Katara-esque; no daggers - just concern flooding her features. She pleads, “Who he is, I mean, who his family are-”

“Iroh?” Sokka couldn’t hide the look of confusion on his face if he tried. “Katara what are you _talking_ about?”

His sister throws her hands up in the air, a look of utter despair covering her features. It takes a second but it shifts to disbelief, and then to pity, and then to frustration as she pinches the bridge of her nose. “You’re kidding. You can’t be this stupid, Sokka. You can’t be.” 

Her brother only stares. 

“I mean what? You haven’t asked? Or even been the slightest bit curious? Fuck, Sokka, you don’t even _recognise_ him?”

Nothing.

“Okay.” she draws the word out slowly, as if explaining something to a child, “Ask him about his family. Ask him where he’s from.” He opens his mouth to argue, to explain _no_ Katara, you don’t _understand_ Katara, he’ll tell me when he’s _ready_ Katara, but she beats him to it.

“I don’t care what sob story he’s sold you.” she snaps, “You seem pretty close, so I’ll let it come from him, but spirits help me, burst this bubble or I’ll do it for you.” Her mouth quickly sets back into a thin line, with the same steely glare from earlier as she hazards a glance over his shoulder, “Talk. Then we’ll see if you still want to be best friends.”

The walk back to the car is a short one, so Sokka goes as slow as he humanly can. He runs his hands through his hair and looks pointedly anywhere except his destination, Katara’s warnings echo through him. They slice and reslice. Over and over. He crosses the road, a car swerving slightly to miss him and honking in its wake. Sokka flips them off as he stares straight ahead. Straight into the horizon; from this angle, he can just about make out their distance look-out point. The hilltop many nights are spent upon, talking about everything and nothing in particular. Everything about the world. Anything but the big things. _Who are you? No, really._ He lets his gaze fall back onto the windscreen as he approaches it, Zuko sits behind the glass, having moved to the front seat. He stares back; placid and neutral, unaware. _Who are you?_

The question will confound him for the rest of the afternoon.

Still, as he slips back behind the wheel, he flashes Zuko an award-winning smile and tries his hardest to ignore the cacophony of symbols in his brain. 

“Are you hungry?” He engages the ignition, “I know a brilliant place for dandan noodles, not too far from here. How does that sound?” Zuko hums in agreement, a small smile gracing his lips. Sokka can’t help but notice the way he’s physically relaxed since Katara left the vehicle, and a familiar pang of guilt strikes in his stomach. _What does she know that I don’t?_ The boy shifts slightly to resume looking out of the window, Sokka pulls out of the parking space back onto the main road. _What aren’t you telling me, Zuko?_

The drive is once again quiet, but not uneasy. An extension of their regular excursions. He can almost fool himself that it’s just that. But they pull into a small off-road corner, and the boy beside him freezes up, and Sokka’s panic starts up all over again.  
  
They’re parked adjacent to a small restaurant; he found it once, back after they first moved away, when he’d still visit Yue for weekend explorations. Adventures around a city they’d just begun to call their own. This used to be their spot. His heart twinges slightly at the thought. 

He’s _sure_ she wouldn’t mind, confident of it, even, but Zuko… Zuko looks about ready to burst into flames at the sight. “Uh, buddy?” Sokka wasn't sure he could get any paler, and yet, “You okay?” 

Zuko looks like he’s going to be sick. 

It takes another minute for him to respond, wherein Sokka genuinely considers doing a u-turn and just driving away; getting them as far from here as possible, going until the boy’s hands stop trembling and his eyes return to life. Katara could make her own way home. They just needed to _move_. “Yeah.” he shakes his head almost violently, “Yeah, sorry, um, we’re not far from the Government Hall, are we?” 

The question certainly strikes Sokka in its absurdity, but he nods in confirmation. “Uh, it’s just down the road, actually, about a block away. Why?” Zuko’s deep breaths clearly indicate an effort to calm himself down - it’s only fleetingly successful though, as he opens his eyes and snaps them shut again immediately. “Just. Um. It’s a long story-”

“Should we go somewhere else?” A voice in the back of Sokka’s mind pleads with him to push, to get answers, but there he goes again, unable to stop himself. Willing to drop it all in a heartbeat, to leave it all behind. The same voice chastises him, it tells him he’ll never find the truth if he keeps going like this. Maybe he doesn’t want to. 

“N-no.” Zuko stutters. But his mind’s made up, Sokka’s already pulling away from the curb. “R-really,” he tries to protest again, “it’s fine. Sokka it’s fine.” He doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t need to. His friend’s words speak of objection, but his tremors have already visibly decreased. Sokka keeps his eyes on the road as he speaks. 

“Yeah, sorry about this, it’s just - I _just_ realised I’m not really in the mood for spicy food. Is that okay?”

From his peripheral view of him, Zuko looks taken aback - whatever argument he had lined up dies in his throat. “Um. Yeah? I- I guess?” He glances back between Sokka and the road ahead, as if he can’t quite decide whether to believe it. “What do you want to eat then?”

He pretends to think about it. 

“Something sweet.” A left at the lights, further down by a mile in the opposite direction from whence they came. Sokka doesn’t quite understand the relevance of Zuko’s earlier query, but he suddenly has the urge to put as much space between them and the aforementioned Government building as possible. “Ice cream.” He says resolutely, at last, opting for a scenic route through some trees, “Let’s get ice cream.”

This particular gelato shop is one he’s only been to a couple of times; it’s further out of the way, safe from the bustle in the heart of the city. It’s still technically in the centre, well within drivable reach of his sister, but it’s peaceful. Zuko seems to agree. He slinks out of his passenger door, feet crunching into gravel below, and stretches.

“It’s quiet here.”   
  
Sokka hums, reaching for his sunglasses in the glove compartment, the spring sun showing its face at long last. “Yeah, our mother used to take Katara and I here for walks sometimes.” He locks the car, “There’s a nature trail just beyond that field. A little patch of scenic life in the middle of the city.” 

Zuko smiles, “It’s nice.”

He smiles back. Natural. Easy.

“It is.”

The inside of the parlour remains largely unaltered; white walls and wooden tables. At the front, above the counter, is a large chalkboard detailing flavours and specials. Another thing Sokka is glad to see hasn’t changed, is the shop’s penchant for unusual flavours. He purveys the board.

“What are you thinking of?” His elbow gently finds Zuko’s side, prodding him out of his thoughts. 

The boy turns to give him a quizzical look, “In general? Or..” 

Sokka snorts. “What _flavour_ are you thinking of, dummy.”

“Oh! Vanilla.” 

“Really? Vanilla?” 

Zuko narrows his eyes, “It’s a good flavour, and never disappoints you. So yes, vanilla.” He frowns, something else catching his attention. In front of them, a middle-aged man is complaining about some special not being available.

“It was here last year.” He argues, “Why would you stop stocking it? Are you sure you don’t have any?” The woman serving the desk looks like she’d rather be anywhere but there. 

“Sir, I’m afraid what you see here and on the board is all that we have. If you’re desperate for a specific flavour, then I advise looking somewhere else.” 

The man stalks off, grumbling under his breath. 

Sokka tries to give her his most reassuring smile, ordering for them both; vanilla for Zuko, and a limited-edition flavour for himself. He tips generously for good measure. 

“I could have paid for myself.” the boy beside him mumbles as Sokka collects their cones and hands one over to him. 

“My treat.” He smiles, licking the ice cream. Zuko’s eyes linger on him for only a second, before he pointedly looks away towards the door.

“Do you wanna, uh-” he points towards it with his thumb. 

“Eat these outside? Yeah, sure.” Sokka strides past him, holding it open. It looks almost like Zuko might blush as he offers a small nod and leaves. Sokka flashes one last smile towards the woman at the counter and heads out behind him. 

“I’m just saying, all those flavours. All of them - and I can’t believe you chose _vanilla_.” They’re further from the shop now, parked amongst the grass. They sit, leaning against the car bonnet, the sun warming them beneath the trees. Zuko gives him an offended look. 

“What’s _wrong_ with vanilla?” he scrunches his nose up at Sokka’s own scoop, a violent shade of red. “Honestly, who looks at suanmeitang and thinks: that needs to be an ice cream flavour.”

Sokka laughs and nudges Zuko’s foot with his own. “Not a fan?”

He shrugs, not moving his foot away, “Not really. Not everything needs to be transformed into something else.” 

“Hmm. Fair enough.” Sokka takes a few licks of his ice cream, savouring the sweet and sour taste, “Wrong, of course, but fair enough.” 

Zuko laughs, and it's a beautiful sound - light and bright and carefree. Rare. Sokka grins and pokes his shoulder. He gets shoved in the side, hard, for his troubles. 

Sokka is stumbling through a field when Katara texts him, letting them know her practice is running late. The aide-memoire; her name flashing across his mobile screen, is a swift reminder to his gut. His gut, and all the guilt he harbours there. Zuko is walking slightly ahead, brushing low branches and long grass out of their path. He’s quietly humming a song he doesn’t recognise, Sokka wonders if he even knows he’s doing it, but he won’t point it out - that would make it stop. He texts back a quick acknowledgement to his sister and files his phone away. As he slots it into his back pocket, he tries desperately to place all his unanswered questions, all his sirens and what-ifs, in there alongside it.

He jogs up to Zuko, who seems startled by his sudden reappearance. He quickly smooths his expression into a soft smile. 

“Katara’s running a little late.” Sokka offers, shooting a sympathetic look. “You’re easily spooked, huh?” He isn’t sure why he asks, to anyone else it would be simple. Few things often are with Zuko. He watches the boy nod slightly as he looks off into the distance. Perhaps it’s the newfound peace between the two of them, the green grass and the warm sun, perhaps it's the doubts eating him alive. For the first time in a long time, Sokka asks _why_.

The figure beside him tenses; he curses his hubris, the ramifications of the question catching up with him. _You won’t even push for his full name and yet you’re asking him why he flinches so often? You can’t put that one together yourself?_

The thing is, Sokka can put that one together. 

He just hopes he’s lucky enough to be wrong. 

Zuko stares at the ground, his steps gradually becoming more forceful, like he’s begging his feet not to give out underneath him, “My- father.” 

Sokka’s never had much luck.

“He wasn’t…a great person. You kinda learn- you learn to…expect. Like, you preempt every move. To- avoid them. But people like him,” he clenches his fist. Sokka wants to reach out and hold it. “they don’t make it easy. Every step, every surprise, it’s like a precursor to something worse I-” he stops abruptly, eyes still trained on the grass, “sorry, I don’t know-” his voice stills. He’s staring at his wrist, his wrist, with Sokka’s hand wrapped around it. It’s as if they both realise it at the same time. 

He doesn’t let go. Katara’s words come back, hard and fast.

_Who he is. Who his family are._

Zuko’s face has never looked so clear. Petals of red skin that blooms over his eye. Flowering past his cheek. Swirling around his ear. 

_Who his family are._

_Who his family are._

_Who did this to you?_ The same familiar thought buzzes behind his eyes, because he knows. He knows. He doesn’t know enough, he doesn’t know the name, he doesn’t know a face or a past, a present, a future. But, in some ways, Sokka knows everything. 

For the first time since the question arose, Zuko meets his gaze; amber glittering with tears like gold beneath the water. He registers a distant chime of a text message, but he can’t quite hear, and the sound between them is both deafening and none existent. 

In some ways, Sokka knows everything.

In other ways, he knows nothing at all. 

The drive back is charged and tense. Sokka dropped Zuko’s arm the moment they decided to return to the car, but his fingers still burn. Katara is gracious enough not to comment on it when she slides into the back after class. Zuko is resolutely staring out of the window, as if he can wish himself to vanish. She raises one pointed eyebrow at her brother from across the console, but doesn’t put up more of a fight than that. They don’t listen to the radio. When Sokka narrowly avoids a collision, she grumbles about his head being in the clouds with a glare in the rearview mirror - but there’s no real venom in it, and that’s about the extent of her wrath. Moreso, overwhelmingly so, there’s the sense of worry she emits from her seat behind them. Trying to catch his eye more and more, questions screaming in her own; sentiments of _did you talk to him_ , _do you know?_ Sokka shakes his head slightly as if to answer them. It’s enough, she slumps back in her seat, defeated. 

He rolls his eyes, swallowing his shame. 

Zuko continues to stare at the trees. He doesn’t appear to take any stock of the exchange whatsoever. 

Katara gets out of the car the second the engine shuts off, she hardly bothers to say farewells - but not entirely, because she’s still who she is, mumbling a half-hearted goodbye to a very absent Zuko. He responds with about as much energy, still dazed almost, and for a second that same apprehension crosses again her face - this time for him. 

As soon as it’s there, it’s gone, and so is she, door clicking shut behind her. Sokka lets out a long exhale. 

“I’m sor-” 

“ _Don’t_ say you’re sorry.” Zuko rubs his face with his hand, seemingly finally rejoining their plane of existence. “Don’t, really Sokka, you just asked a question.”

“I shouldn’t have-”

“ _I_ shouldn’t have.” The boy meets his stare, and he looks extremely tired. Sokka bites back the trepidation rising in him. “I know so much about you, and yet…” he closes his eyes, tipping his head back against the chair, “You deserve to know, honestly, just. Give me a day. Just give me a day Sokka. I know I don’t deserve it but-” his eyes are pleading when they land on him again. They’re open, unguarded. _Honest_. “Please.”

Sokka nods. He gently touches the hand beside him. Barely there, feather-light, as if he needs to deny it to himself later. “Of course.” 

And Zuko steps out of the car.

Sokka makes a straight line for his room. He vaguely registers his sister trying to speak with him as he passes her, but the roaring in his ears is too great. Eventually, she must give up and concede defeat. Her protests die out by the time he reaches the landing. Something internal winces at his rude behaviour, but it’s not enough. Nothing’s enough. He keeps walking until he’s safe behind the old white door of his room, he pulls the blinds without acknowledging what might be behind them, and then he falls into a thousand pieces.

Sokka hates not knowing. 

The early afternoon sun still protests behind the wooden slats restraining it, he yanks the blackout curtains over it with perhaps unnecessary force. He doesn’t need to see the world right now, he needs to think. He needs the throbbing in his temples to leave. 

Sokka hates not _knowing._

He pulls his laptop towards him, unlocking it with a snap and frantically opens tabs. He wracks his brain for all the information he has. For anything he can find. Digging through inside jokes and late phone calls, quick glances and uncertain smiles. Every tidbit he owns, every sparkling memory, he strips them of their iridescence, frantically pulling apart words. Something. Something has to be here. Anything. 

Zuko, Caldera, scar. No results.

_Who are you?_

He pushes the panic down and forces himself to focus. He thinks about Zuko’s face when they sat before the restaurant; his bizarre query, rife with panic. He thinks about his home, his hoarding of the fact, the dread in his face. That city, what it’s known for. How mentions of his parents calcine his good moods. The red skin that licks beneath his touch - that unconscious, all-knowing, agonising touch. Slowly, as he gathers the pieces with shaking fingers, Sokka paints the picture. 

Zuko. Government. Caldera. Fire. Father. Scar.

Something lands. He clicks the article. The ground beneath him breaks apart.

At some point between hyperventilating and denial, he must fall asleep. He misses dinner. He wakes, hours later, as the sun pours against the horizon, dripping like honey steadily out of view. Something about it feels so final, like the closing of a book. Memories flood back, coming and going with franticness. The end of a chapter, pages pressed together too quickly before the ink has fully dried. Sokka feels lost at sea, battered by waves of uncertainty, and in the throws of it all, he reaches for the one certainty he knows. The only life raft he can be sure of. 

“Hello?”

She picks up on the second ring. 

At first, the silence hangs between them - how can he speak with no words to say? No words but still too many. That same familiar ache, being stuck between two absolutes. Everything and nothing at all. So, Sokka just breathes, slow and steady breaths. Yue’s loved him his whole life, always in one way or another; they once moved so in sync, parts of the same machine. He prays she still knows him now, as she knew him then. 

“Sokka..? Are you okay? Did something happen?” He breathes. She hums gently and makes a start. 

“Is it Katara?” Sokka makes a strangled sound, trying to muster the most definitive ‘no’ he can when his throat feels like it’s closing. “Hakoda? Bato?” More resolute murmuring. She pauses, seemingly, to think clearly, “Is it Zuko?” 

His breath audibly catches, and true to what he’d hoped, it’s the only thing she needs. 

“Oh, Sokka.” 

“You said- you said his name. You recognised it.” Sokka’s voice somehow goes even quieter, “Did everyone know except me?”

Yue doesn’t speak for a very long time.

“I had my suspicions, I remember hearing about Oz-”

“ _Don’t_ say his name.”

“I knew he had a son.” He can hear the apologetic tone as she speaks, “I’m so sorry Sokka I thought you knew, or that you would know.” She sighs, “I thought he might tell you himself.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t.” Sokka knows the venom in his tone is misdirected, Yue doesn’t deserve this. But as the bile rises in his mouth, it has to go _somewhere_ , and it lands in his words. 

“I didn’t want to hurt-”

“Tui and fucking La, everybody is just so desperate to _‘protect Sokka’_ , arent they? Idiot Sokka, _pathetic_ Sokka, who can’t even figure it out himself. Who spends months, MONTHS, Yue, befriending - caring.” He runs a hand over his face, shoving blossoming tears from his eyes angrily, “He’s the fucking son of my- of my- he-”

“Sokka.” Her voice is firm and grounding, never unkind. It soothes him just enough. “ _Stop_ berating yourself, this isn’t your fault.”

His voice shrinks down into a whisper, barely audible. It’s as if he almost doesn’t want her to hear him, perhaps that’s so. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

The intonation of her speech is incredibly gentle, “He’s probably terrified.” 

“Of me?”

“Of who he is. Of who people think he is. Of the truth. I don’t know.”

“Of who people think he is?” Sokka repeats, slowly. 

“Yeah,” she hums in thought, “Remember when we were little, and those boys at school were bullying me? And then they found out you were my friend, and they stopped?”

He laughs in spite of himself; it’s still a hollow sound, but it’s something. “Yeah, I was so mad at those guys,” he runs a hand through his hair, letting it down, “they were supposed to be my friends.”

“Right, and when they found out, it was like they suddenly respected me. Because of my connection to you.”

“I guess..”

“So for Zuko, it’s like the opposite, isn’t it? He knows you’ll view him differently because of who his father is. Granted, he probably isn’t aware _quite_ how differently…” She trails off. They they both know how deep Sokka’s hurt runs. 

“But he knows it’ll be different nonetheless.” He finishes for her. 

“Exactly. Sokka, can I ask you a question?”

”Sure.”

“Do you think Zuko’s good?”

The boy freezes, hand going lifeless in his hair, “Good? By what standard?”

“Yours. Just yours.” Her tone becomes more confident, like she’s just realised something he’s yet to discover. That, Sokka supposes, is becoming a theme. “Before you knew who he was, who he really is, was Zuko good?”

He considers it, but he doesn’t need to. He’s as sure as he was that they’d get ice cream instead of noodles. As certain as the decision to persevere, to talk though paper, to build up trust brick by brick for no reason other than to have it. Sokka doesn’t need to think. He knows - he’s known it for a very long time. 

“Yes.” He wipes his eyes. “Zuko’s good.” _Because he has to be._

“I’m not saying he won't let you down, or that he isn’t a risk. But if he’s good, well, only you know that Sokka. You _could_ hear him out. You don’t have to, but do you want to?”

“I do.” 

And he means it. He really, really means it. He wants to, needs to. There’s nothing else to say.

Sokka gives him his day. Three, actually, if anyone’s counting - and he is. The events are unsurprising, but they cut him nonetheless. He banks on Zuko’s self-imposed deadline coming and going. He counts on a general lack of communication. He expects it, when the adjacent blinds don’t open till his car leaves the driveway each morning, and close before he returns. 

He predicts it all, all except- He doesn’t see it coming when Zuko’s stood beneath his window.

He’s leaning by the trellising when Sokka descends it’s wooden rings. His hands are stuffed into his pockets. He says nothing. 

“You ready?” He says nothing. 

They walk to the car. Sokka grips the wheel tight, the same destination as always on his fingertips. “You’re sure?” He says nothing. They drive.   
  


Sokka was 11 when he first learnt about the universe. About space, about an existence beyond his own. There was always one particular thing that fascinated him endlessly. One fact. Through the nightfall of the evening, he can still recount it now.

All stars die.

Ultimately, they run out of hydrogen to burn. This doesn’t stop the star, of course; it’ll keep going, as all things do. It’ll burn through every other fuel it has, just to survive. When those run out as well, it’ll explode.

For one week, this supernova - this bright, blinding thing - can outshine all the other stars in its galaxy. The final swan song of dying light. Then, just like that, it’ll fade. Gone. Turned into a black hole or a neutron star. And where once was home to the brightest flame - will sit a small, dense, lifeless reminder. Sokka once likened the view of the city from this peak to a million tiny stars. He wonders now, how long he has left; until they blur into one triumphant scream of colour, and burn themselves to death. 

It’s not quite warm enough to shut the engine off entirely, but he does so anyway, punishing himself in some way. The cold air seeping gradually into the car bites and Zuko _still isn’t speaking_. Sokka takes the moment to really take stock of the boy sitting in his passenger seat. He isn’t sleeping well, that much is clear, from the deep purple ridges that pillow beneath his eyes. His skin manages to look more gaunt, as if it hasn’t been just three days but rather a lifetime. In some ways maybe it has. His hair is also down, a rare occurrence, hanging limply around his face. He’s never seemed this dishevelled. More than anything, there’s that same feeling of exhaustion that clouds his features. The very one Sokka saw, sat in the driveway as figure begged him for more time, the very one that’s been haunting his thoughts ever since. Zuko finally brings his gaze to match the eyes raking over him, and it’s like they’re right there. Back in the spring glow, under a tin roof, back before his illusions shattered and Sokka lost his grip on all he held true. He still curses that moment. Those sliding doors. The weight of the world before it slipped onto his back, teetering over the edge, warning. 

He’s been falling past a cliffside for seventy-two hours, and the sadness in Zuko’s eyes does little to cushion his landing. 

“I don’t know what to-”

“Start at the beginning. Your name. Your _full_ name.” He can put the pieces together from there, Sokka just needs to hear it. 

“Uh,” there’s no resistance in the boy’s expression, perhaps regret; whether it’s for what he hasn’t said, or for what he’s yet to say, Sokka isn’t sure.

“Sozin.” He lets it fall on the exhale, “Zuko Sozin.” 

The words hang in the air like a noose. 

A vibration begins to bubble up in Sokka, with the chemistry of a laugh but more sinister, more painful. He bites out his response between hard breaths. “Zuko Sozin,” he says the name like he’s reading it from a script, “son of Ozai.” Zuko winces and for the very first time, Sokka doesn’t try to intercept it. 

“My father-”

“ _Your_ father,” he’s still going, a spark igniting in him, “is a bastard. Is evil. Is a lunatic. Your father..” His eyes are blown and glassy, agonised, telling the memories of a life he lost at nine. Matches to a powder keg,

“Your father killed my mother.”

Whatever Zuko was expecting, whatever lecture or anecdote, whatever- it isn’t that. A small voice cracks through as he looks away, towards the city, at the ground, anywhere but the boy beside him shaking with rage. “No.” he says quietly, “That’s not- So you were-”

“Oh I’m sure you heard all about it,” Sokka spits, “the _brave_ men and women, how courageous, how daring. Making a stand for their nation, for their _glorious_ leader.” Zuko is staring, frozen like a deer in headlights, like one shove and he might break into a hundred pieces, “They drove. A car. Into the middle of the _fucking_ pavement.” Sokka’s voice builds, wavering, “My mother was the one good thing this world had against that man, and- they _STOLE_ her!” his tone scratches, cracking from the tears. The world is more of a watercolour to him now; shapes and colours and nothing of substance, no solid lines, nothing to hold him together. “THEY STOLE HER. FROM ME. FROM _US_. THEY TOOK HER FROM ME, FOR _YOUR_ FATHER.”

Sokka lets out a strangled cry, years of anger and fear barraging back through him. He pulls and hits the wheel in front of him. Zuko sits unmoving, watching.

Waiting. 

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOOD! BUT HOW DO I _KNOW_ ZUKO? HOW CAN I KNOW- THAT YOU’RE NOT LIKE _HIM_?”

He expects the movement from the corner of his eye to be Zuko leaving. With the click of a seatbelt, he preempts him getting out, going home - Sokka might never see him again. Tomorrow, he could be gone. Back home, back to where his loyalties lie. _Would that be all his fault?_ The dizzying thought crosses his mind - _is he the one thing standing in the way?_ Sokka waits for the final thread to snap, for the shoe to drop, but it never comes. Because for the second time that night, he’s wrong. 

Calloused hands, not too dissimilar to his own, gently move up his arms and hold his shoulders firmly. Every move Zuko makes is demonstrated clearly, like he’s trying not to spook a wild animal. It he motions look to be as unfamiliar to him as they feel to Sokka. It’s awkward and it’s strained, as he leans over the console. But his actions are undeniable, they’re not a trick or a misdirect. Sokka is crying in his car on a Wednesday night, harder than he has in years, and Zuko. Zuko is _holding_ him. 

His brain screams. Vibrant lights, sirens; Sokka lets them all wash over him with every sob that wracks his body. He lets it happen. He lets them go. He lets arms curl around him firmly and he lets the world dissolve.

It takes minutes, maybe hours, of calming his breathing. At some point, Zuko settles too and Sokka feels his fingers absentmindedly brush patterns into his skin. It alternates with the occasional stroke of his hair. It’s a comfort he can’t quite place yet, but it nestles into his check and makes a home between his ribs. When Zuko finally punctures the silence, it comes in the form of barely more than a whisper. He pulls back, hesitantly, only by a couple of inches. Enough to look Sokka in the eye.

“I don’t know if I’m good but,” he worries his lip slightly, looking out of the window past his shoulder, “I want to be. I want to be. You don’t have to trust me, Sokka. Kick me out, push me to the curb, Agni knows I’d deserve it if you did. But what I know. I can tell you this - I don’t want to be my father.” 

All the previous ferocity in Sokka has dried up. The dazzling blast of a supernova reduced to its smouldering remains. Flickering. Flickering. Burning out.

“I’m sorry-”

Zuko’s face turns from open to something concerningly stoic. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” He pulls him even closer, Sokka wonders if he realises. “Don’t apologise to me, ever.”

There are a million thoughts, a thousand possible conclusions streaming through Sokka’s mind. Currents pulsing, ricocheting from neuron to neuron. And they vary in substance, but all point to one epiphany-

And he’s never asked about the scar.

“You can’t bend, can you? Is that why?”

“Why what?”

“Is that why he did that to you?” The pain that jolts through an otherwise measured expression answers his question better than words ever could. Sokka takes his chances. “Why you’re here, why you had such an awful time I mean, your father is who he is and if you can’t bend-”

“Yeah.”

Sokka snuggles slightly into his shoulder, despite himself, a blanket of fatigue overtaking him at once. Zuko doesn’t flinch. “I can’t bend either, you know? People think it makes us lesser but they're wrong. I think it makes us stronger - we have to learn to get through life without that privilege.” He pulls his head away, looking up at Zuko with all the sincerity he can fathom. “Right?”

“Right.”

“You wanna know what else I think?”

Zuko hums softly. 

“I think it’s a choice. Being good. Even if you don’t realise you have it, you do. And, not that I’m trying to influence you here, but I think it really is worth it. Just for- for everything. All the stuff that comes with being good.” 

There’s more in what he doesn’t say, told through the infliction of his tone and the way his hand comes to rest atop the pale one on his shoulder. _So choose this, it, all of it. Please._ He hopes the other boy can hear it; in his breathing, in the rustling of leaves outside and the distant traffic sounds. In the universe between their worlds.

Zuko exhales gently, pushing another hand through Sokka’s hair. When his answer comes it sounds so easy, so simple, like he doesn’t even have to wonder. 

“Well, then I choose.”

“You choose to be good?”

“I choose to be good...

And everything else.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment if you like & you can chat to me on tumblr @[tysukis](https://tysukis.tumblr.com/)
> 
> As I said before this fic is on a small hiatus, hopefully I will return (sooner rather than later) but I can’t guarente when that will be. Thank you for all the lovely comments you continue to leave here - they make me smile so much, and I hope to be back with the next chapter soon <3


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